


Like Always - Like Us

by NO2800



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: !!!!!, Always, Angst and Feels, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, I let Allison live u guys, Love, Queen Lydia, Stydia, Teen Wolf, This is them - like how it is but wo the Werewolf stuff, childhood AU, omg, they're in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 15:52:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12751440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NO2800/pseuds/NO2800
Summary: "Could you please relax?""The beach really isn't my natural habitat Lyds."She flips paper in her magazine, pops the bubble on her gum, changes position, left then right, before feigning to answer him."As opposed to?"He shifts on the blanket they've laid on the sand for the hundredth and fiftieth time, adjusts his sunglasses and makes a high pitched noise of dissatisfaction."As opposed to a dark room with Kleenex and pornhub," he quips sarcastically and shealmostsmiles.Or: Stiles and Lydia and growing up together.





	Like Always - Like Us

**Author's Note:**

> This is Stydia growing up together AU!! Certainly a lot of typos and stuff, but I'll edit them if I find them!
> 
> SO: The "Now" is like in a correct time-line, but the "Then" Is like jumping back-and-forth during their childhood...... So yeah!
> 
> Also I love them and pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaseeeeee leave feedback! Hope you enjoy!

_Poems are written for lovers._

_It doesn’t matter whether you are a bleeding or blooming one. It doesn’t matter if you are brushing your fingers over their shoulders at night. It doesn’t matter if you are broken. Shattered into thousands and thousands of sharp pieces rattling inside of you with every taken step._

_Because whether aftermath or introduction, a crick has been made inside of every single person that has once been a lover. Something that makes the words of a poem sprig inside of one’s chest, wisp at something buried there._

_Every single word of that is truth._

_And another truth is, haven’t we all been lovers?_

 

**Now.**

 

She's just driving past, on her way to Allison’s for pedicures and homework when she sees him.

She usually doesn't take the route past the graveyard. Graveyards give her headaches and a strange feeling in her gut she normally avoids. But today she had blinked in to the right, wanting to cut past the after-work traffic, and her eyes catch on the maroon of the t-shirt he's wearing underneath a grey hoodie.

His shoulders are a bit hunched and his hair sticks up a little in the back, in his hands he clasps a big bouquet of flowers and her chest clenches in some sort of strange sensation when she realizes who they're for.

She doesn't really know Stiles Stilinski. She knows he's in a never-one-without-the-other duo with Scott McCall.

Scott McCall who once went through the trouble of looking up her name and classes, waiting outside of her English classroom for half an hour only to return the library card she had apparently lost, and he'd found in the parking lot. She'd think it was creepy, but he seems that way with everyone.

She knows he drives a blue Jeep, lives not too far from her and once lost that bet to Isaac Lahey that had him wearing a neon pink t-shirt with the words “SatisFUCKtion guaranteed” stamped on it for a week.

Her point is, she doesn't know Stiles Stilinski past these vast facts, such as whom his best friend is, that he used to nurse an, honestly, god awful buzz cut, that he speaks in long complicated sentences to make coach confused in Econ, and that he has been a constant in the same corridors and classrooms as her since age seven.

She doesn't know him, but it's not like anyone doesn't remember when his mom died.

They had been in sixth grade, his desk in the classroom had gaped empty for an entire week and they had all been instructed to write something nice on the card the class sent with their condolences to the Sheriff's house.

If he was easy to miss before that (and maybe he wasn't), then he was impossible to ignore when he returned. She remembers him, but it’s different now. They’re seventeen, verging on eighteen, and for some reason she unconsciously slows down as she spots him move down the graveled path of the cemetery.

She doesn't really know why, maybe she's curious or something, but she follows his way, craning her neck to be able to see him more clearly. She's nosing, to be quite frank, and maybe that's why her eyes grow wide, her lips part and blood rushes to her cheeks when he turns suddenly, narrowing his eyes at her car. She's been caught, and just as she steps on the gas, their gazes meet. It's even worse, because she knows he's close enough to have seen it was her, and she realizes as she ducks her head down behind the wheel and speeds off, that it'd been easier just to wave or acknowledge him.

But it's too late, and as she lies in Alison's bed an hour later with cucumber slices covering her eyes and her hair in a towel, she just can't bring herself to tell her best friend about it, so they can moan and giggle about the awkwardness of it.

 

Because thing is, that clenching sensation in her chest clings, and for the short moment when his eyes had meet hers the heaviness in them seems to have transferred to her shoulders.

She realizes that there's nothing to laugh and moan about. Instead she lies quietly and wonders what it would feel like to lose something that's supposed to be constant.

 

**Then.**

 

"Can I borrow the blue crayon?"

Lydia turns her head, eyes narrowing as she assesses the lanky boy that has come to stand by her desk. She is eight years old, her feet don’t reach the floor when she sits properly and she's had the unfortunate luck of being sat at the desk beside his in their classroom. He's always loud, seems impossibly incapable of being still and he may _not_ have her blue crayon.

"I'm using it." She offers in answer, raising her nose high before pointedly turning back to her drawing. She's drawing a spaceship, and it's turning out spectacular.

"You're not." His, _Stiles Stilinski's_ , shrill voice insists and she lifts her head again, frowning at him. "You're-" He continues, fidgeting unsurely under her harsh gaze but then seemingly collecting himself, standing straighter as he tries again. "You're using the red one." He points out; pushing a hand over his forehead to will away the unruly strands of brown hair that always seems to be hanging down in his eyes. Lydia squares up, her arm curling protectively around the crayons spilled over her desk.

"Well, I'm _going_ to use it."

"That's not fair." He huffs, crossing his arms over his chest for a moment, and then dropping his stance only seconds later to scratch at his nose. "Ms. Waltz says to share them with everyone!" He states, and Lydia rolls her eyes because Stiles never listens to Ms. Waltz so that's not fair either.

"Ms. Waltz says that everyone is a winner at trivia, which means she's a liar." Lydia retorts, invalidating his argument. It's true. Ms. Waltz says they're not supposed to count their points, because that's not what matters, but Lydia does anyways and she always has the most. She also knows that Stiles almost always has the most after her, which makes her want to share the blue crayon with him even less.

He stares at her for a second, eyes slitting as if he's trying to come up with something smart to shoot back at her, but after a beat of building expectation he sways back on his heels, brow raising and shoulders shrugging. His gaze lands on her drawing and suddenly she wants to hide it from him as he stares. Instead, she resigns to raise her chin even higher. "That's good." He comments, and at his words her eyes follow his down to the piece of paper in front of her.

"I know." She replies, her chest jutting out a little with pride, because she made the flames look really cool and she knows it.

When she looks back up again however, she finds him grinning at her coyly, blue crayon snagged from her desk in his hand and eyes glimmering mischievously as he sets off back to his desk, blinking innocently at Ms. Waltz when she passes. "Thanks Lydia." he shoots to her over his shoulder with a wink, and she seethes in her seat, cheeks flushing with shame from having been fooled. After a moment of her hands curling into fists she finally resigns to ignore him, deciding it’s the best punishment she turns back to draw hard lines along her painting. More fire.

She's interrupted yet again a few minutes later as a pair of worn sneakers scuffing the floor in front of her desk catches her attention. She looks up, and he's there again. He doesn't really look at her when he holds the crayon out, his brow is knitted and there are flecks of pink on his neck. "I'm uhm..." He begins. "I'm done with it." He mumbles as he keeps holding it out for her to take.

She considers it for a moment, scrutinizing him before finally reaching out to snatch it from his hand, not feigning to answer him, and he stomps back to his own desk a beat later, hoisting himself up on his seat.

Lydia continues to draw on her spaceship. It's hard to get it scientifically accurate, but she tries her best to remember what she’d read and saw on the pictures from Illustrated Sciences a few days earlier, her tongue peeking out at the corner of her mouth in concentration as she goes about it.

It's not until the bell rings out for recess that she's looking up again. She collects her drawing, putting it neatly into the cluster of her desk and carefully takes the crayons in hand to put them back in the box by the door. She glances at the others drawings as she passes, smugly noting that hers is the prettiest, and doesn't reflect further over the slime-monster Stiles had been working on until she's dropping the crayons into their box.

It's only then that she realizes that there hadn't been a speck of blue on his paper.

 

**Now.**

 

She looks up when he rips the door to the Economics classroom open five minutes late and pants a "Sorry," to Finnstock before clamoring over to a vacant desk.

She doesn't actually comprehend it's the one next to hers until he sits down, and she does most definitely not notice she's still staring until his eyes flit up to meet hers and she hastily looks away, cheeks flushing and brow furrowing.

Stupid. It's stupid.

She fucked up and now he has power over her in knowing she did. Lydia Martin does not fuck up. Not unintentionally. She feels guilty and wrong as she presses her suddenly clammy hands against the skirt over her thighs before resuming to take notes, furiously writing down what Finnstock i scrawling over the board.

She dares to glance at him in the corner of her eye a few minutes later, watches him take notes for half a second before his eyes stray to meet with hers again. She doesn't manage to look away in time this time either and fumes with it as she stares hard down at the textbook in front of her. She will not allow this to be a thing, she decides as she marks the point over an 'i' so hard that the point of her pen nearly breaks. She refuses for it to be.

She'll apologize, say she thought he was someone else the other day and then continue not to notice him for the entirety of high school. It sounds fair to her, and so as the bell rings out an hour later she quickly collects her things and stands up to wait for him by the door.

The rest of the class slowly trickles out and he lingers, taking his time packing together as she stares at him. He doesn't look at her until the last few people in the room slips out the door, and with her eyes steadily trained on him it can hardly be much of a reach to understand she wants something.

They're the only ones left in the classroom when he comes to a stop in front of her, hoisting his bag higher up on his shoulder. With raised eyebrows and a thin smirk he nods at her, looking a little tired.

"Martin?" He says, eyebrow cocked, and for some strange reason it infuriates her. He's too tall for her to not have to tint her neck a bit to be able to meet his eyes and she crosses her arms, not wanting to start the first real conversation she'll be having with him in years at an disadvantage.

She's just about to speak up when he beats her too it, eyes moving from hers, instead falling down to the floor, and hinted cockiness from a moment before no longer there.

"Look if this is about the other day..." he starts, trailing off.

He drags a hand through his hair with a sigh, eyes slowly climbing upwards toward hers again.

"Were cool, ok?" He offers finally, gaze in line with hers. The heat inside of her dies suddenly, arms dropping to her sides as that look in his eyes return again. The one from the other day.

"I-" she begins, but he cuts her off again.

"It's cool, I get it. You saw someone you vaguely recognized and stared a little too long. Happens to everyone. Now-"

He gestures for the door behind her, obviously trying to put an end to the stilted conversation between them he has held completely on his own.

And she means to step aside and let him leave, drop the subject and probably never talk to him about it again. She totally does. But then a completely inappropriate and not at all socially acceptable; "Do you go there often?" leaves her lips instead.

She feels her eyes grow wide with the question and her shoulders stiffen as she quiets.

But they're still looking at each other, and although taken aback he doesn't exactly look offended, instead he gives her a calculating glare as his knuckles tighten around the strap of his bag.

"Why do you care?" He asks back, voice a little sharper and brow furrowed in suspicion.

"I don't." She says, too fast.

"I don't." She repeats, more slowly and lets her shoulders drop from where they'd been hiked up.

She wonders briefly where the hell her brain has ventured off to when he gives her a long scrutinizing look and says; "Alright?" In a tone that suggests that she's the one with questionable social interactions and an IQ below 170 and not him.

Thing is, she realizes as they stare at each other she _is_ curious.

So she speaks up again, this time with more conviction in her voice.

"I just- I mean-"

Does it still hurt? She wants to ask.

Why do you look like you carry the entire world on your shoulders? She wants to say, but she knows you don't ask people you don't really know those sorts of things, so she bites her tongue.

"I'm sorry about your mom." She settles on instead, and a cold hand grips at her gut when the sudden harshness in his eyes that surfaces at her words tells her how wrong they are to be uttered.

"Jeez," he says as he shoulders past her to get out of the classroom, glancing at her as he passes.

"Really Lydia?" He mutters, and then, abruptly and in a way that stings her with being left behind, having lost the battle, he's gone, leaving her open her mouth to respond to no one. And the thing that makes her whip around after him, lips frozen in an unspoken sentence, is that he says it like he knows her.

 

**Then.**

 

In fourth grade their teacher tells them, one Wednesday in September that they'll be playing a game for the rest of the school year. Its purpose is to make new friends and overcome diversion in the class.

Lydia sighs but obeys, because that's what you’re supposed to do regarding these things, and truth is these games only serve to further establish the already set order in the class.

It's called Secret Friend and really, way to go with the wordplay, because how it goes is that every week you'll get a random name on someone in the class to be extra nice too. You can't tell anyone who's on your note, not even the one on the receiving end, you’re just supposed to be a little bit extra kind, and that pretty much sums it up.

The first week Lydia gets Sarah Carlings and on Tuesday she invites Sarah to sit beside her at lunch and on Friday she gives her the friendship bracelet she has braided in studio.

On Monday of the same week, Stiles Stilinski strides over to her just as she's about to leave for the parking lot after school, and gives her a hug. She stands frozen as he lets her go, and he starts pulling at the string of his hoodie as he tells her- "It just looked like you needed one."

On Tuesday he smiles, all big and with teeth, every time her eyes as much as near him in the classroom or on the schoolyard.

Wednesday of the same week she finds note in her bench telling her (in suspiciously shaky and angular handwriting) _'Dear Lydia. Youre hair always loks nice.'_

Come Thursdays Lydia feels certain in the knowledge of who her Secret Friend is when he takes a completely irrational route past her bench to the pencil sharpeners (trying to look casual, and failing) and says- "Hey Lydia." very pointedly, almost tripping over his own feet as he passes.

As Friday rolls along she tries to ignore him when he makes attempts to be nice, like holding up the door for her or asking if she wants to have the glue stick when he's finished.

Stiles has hopeful eyes when he look at her and she can't have that. She has enough on her plate already with all of the girls starting to wear their hair the same way she does and telling her all their secrets. It's not that she doesn't want them to, she designed it that way, but she doesn't have room for Stiles Stilinski's hopeful eyes or scrawly notes in the picture she's trying to paint.

Maybe that's why a few months later it seems like all of these things are adding up to clarity as she watches Jackson, whom fits perfectly beside her according to how the boys on the football team follow him, does something.

"Don't touch it."

It’s early December in Beacon Hills. They never get snow, but all the kids in her grade have been continuously more bundled up for recess as the months go along, and it's probably for the best, seeing as these parts of California can get pretty chilly.

It's cold out right now, for example, and Erica Reyes must be freezing because her gloves and hat have been ripped off and lies in a puddle in the schoolyard.

There are silent tears streaming down her cheeks, a sickening contrast to Jackson's, which are flushed with adrenaline and power. The wind pulls impatiently on the leafless tree crowns and it completely quiet except form Erica's quiet sobs and Jacksons sharp voice.

Erica reaches for her things and Jackson stomps down. It makes her backtrack, pulling her hand back to her body. She looks terrified.

"I said don't touch it." Jackson says again as he glares at her.

"B-but I-" Erica begins, and Jackson cuts her off.

"You said you wanted to play with us. This is how the game goes!" He exclaims.

He nudges her left purple glove with the toe of his boots and a look of disgust on his face. "This is no one’s fault but your own." He states.

Lydia feels it in all of her body as she and her classmates, which are stood in a circle around them witnesses the scene play out, that this - This is... Jackson's taken it too far this time.

"I don't want to play anymore." Erica chokes out, her fingers starting to get pink with the cold and wet with wiping her cheeks clean from tears.

Jackson clicks his tongue at her words. "That's not how the rules go. I told you this.." he looks up and around for approval. "Didn't I tell her the rules as we started playing?"

It's quiet for a second; before someone hums, and that's enough to spur Jackson on to continue.

Lydia glares around the circle to find the idiot who spoke up, but everyone is wearing the same numb expression as they watch, and Lydia does nothing either, so who is she to play the judge, really?

Because Lydia is nine, and she has realized that to be as successful as possible, you must make certain choices in life, although not always the ones you yourself may favor. Like how she has to finish her veggies at the dinner table so that her body will feel good, or like how she shouldn't be playing with Erica or Sandra at recess, or raise her hand every time although she knows all the answers. Because if you do that people will laugh behind your back and make fun of you.

It's cruel and it's simple, and according to Ockham's razor-method the simple way is always the one to go, the smartest way. And Lydia likes science and being smart, so she does as suggested by empirical studies. She stays quiet. Everyone stays quiet.

Until.

Someone is shoving their way forward into the circle of children, and as Stiles stumbles into the middle of it with Scott close behind he's neither silent nor numb. For some reason she feels her heartbeat picking up, because what is he doing?

"What the hell Jackson?" He says, and although they're outside, Lydia swears it's like the air is suddenly low on supply, tightening around them, rigid and so thick that you'd be able to cut it with a knife.

He positions himself between Jackson and Erica, Scott hovering behind his shoulder looking determined, but pressured.

Stiles however, look angry.

"What?!" Jackson spits out, taking a step forward to push at him. Stiles pushes right back and his jacket falls down his right shoulder as he does.

Stiles in his too big clothes and Scott in his orange Sherpa hat doesn't really fit into the math of Lydia's class-science. They stand individually on their own, two integers not involved in the rest of the equation except to add up with one another. They don't fit, she thinks determinedly. They don't.

"It's freezing out and you- You are being mean!" Stiles exclaims, pulling at the arm of his jacket as it continues to slide over his shoulder.

"She isn't playing by the rules!" Jackson shouts, obviously distraught from being interrupted and called out.

"Who cares?!" Says Stiles, brown eyes never straying from Jacksons icy blue ones as he squats down to pick up Erica's things where they lay discarded between them.

Science tells Lydia that technically, as Stiles bends down - he's at a disadvantage against Jackson. But somehow it doesn't feel that way.

He stands up and hands the items over the Scott, whom scurries over with them to Erica. She has finally stopped crying, but tear-tracks are still apparent on her cheeks. The tension in the air seems to have shifted then, concentrated on the space between the two boys staring defiantly at each other in the middle of the circle stood in the frost-bitten school-yard.

The kids next to Lydia has started to shift uncomfortably, as the scene before them has taken and abrupt turn, but Lydia feels spellbound as she watches the two of them. This is an exception, and exceptions are rare and important to record to be able to paint a more accurate picture of any and all subjects.

The tension finally dissolves as Jackson grabs Stiles' arm, face hovering dangerously close to his.

"You ruined everything!" He wheezes before once again pushing him. Stiles stumbles a little, and she can see him reloading, preparing to- well, push back maybe or-

"What's going on here?"

It's only then she notices that all of the others has scattered. That when their teacher nears them, it's only her, Stiles, Scott, Jackson and Erica still staying put.

They get gathered up in an empty classroom and are supposed to try and make sense of what happened. As Stiles explains angrily what happened and Scott nods along, Erica stands quietly behind them, neither agreeing nor denying.

So when Jackson says that he's lying, says he came picking a fight and pushing him for losing the game they were playing it's suddenly easy for Lydia to fit too-big clothed Stiles Stilinski and Sherpa-hat Scott McCall into her equation.

That’s why, when they all turn to her for confirmation and Stiles amber eyes look at her encouragingly, she finds the small and short words she finally decides on, agreeing with Jackson. She knows it's something she has to do to maintain order.

Next time she sees Stiles in the hallway he doesn't even look her way, and when she gets him for Secret Friend two weeks later she rips the small piece of paper in half and dumps it into the purple bin in the classroom.

 

**Now.**

 

"Mom?" She asks tentatively as she sets the table that same night. Her and Natalie rarely talks about things that weighs and by the way her mother answers with a distracted hum she must be assuming Lydia is about to ask for money or a ride somewhere.

"Did you know Claudia Stilinski?" Lydia asks, like it's a bypassing question and formed out of thin air.

Her mother’s eyes fixes on her instantly and the magazine she'd been flicking through falls shut in her hands.

"Lydia?" She inquires, and Lydia can't believe that she constantly makes the mistake of underestimating her mother. She stops what she's doing, grasping the forks she's been laying out for dinner a little closer in her right hand and meets Natalie's gaze. She's waiting for an explanation Lydia doesn't really have.

"I just... I saw her son in the graveyard the other day." She finally says, surprisingly honest.

Natalie nods slowly, blinking at her a few times, seemingly in thoughtfulness. "I knew her." Her mother admits, her mouth tilting into a sad smile. "I knew her well enough to say that she was a very kind woman and loving mother." She offers Lydia, who nods, trying to create meaning for them by attaching them to a face she doesn't really remember.

"She... let me put it this way. It's very tragic to witness a family that seems that content fall apart." She says and then adds with much more venom; "much unlike our own." before letting her gaze drift back down to the magazine in her hands and purses her mouth in a way that stops Lydia from asking anything else, knowing the conversation is bound to spiral into 'divorce' territory, which Lydia's really not up for tonight. Like, _really_ not.

She mulls it over later though, lying in her bed and staring up at the ceiling.

Her mother had described it as tragic, but whatever adjectives rest on her tongue as she thinks back to him earlier that day, it's relatively far from tragic. Which doesn't really make sense, and Lydia likes sense. She likes sense and things she can understand. They're not even finished. He could still hold their interactions over her head in a way she does not like have looming. He's become a problem, and problems are for solving.

 

**Then.**

His dad is staring at him from across the dinner table. Stiles knows he is, although Stiles himself is staring down at his plate and the untouched peas and lumpy mashed potatoes that lies upon it.

"Stiles, son. You've got to eat something."

He doesn't answer. Just like he didn't answer the other two times his dad asked him to finish his meal, or this morning when he asked if Stiles had gotten any sleep. He doesn't want to eat. It tastes wrong, not how mom used to do it. He doesn't want to eat the wrong meatballs and mashed potatoes, he doesn't want to sleep if she doesn't kiss him goodnight and he doesn't want to cry but he can't help it.

He doesn't want to do anything. What he wants is for it to stop hurting in his chest, and for his mom not to be somewhere where he can't see her. He feels angry for some reason. Angry at the phone that won't stop calling with condolences and at how the clock keeps ticking away as if nothing's changed, when in reality, nothing is the same.

He swipes at his nose with the backside of his hand and glances out the window. At least it's raining. That's something he supposes.

"Stiles..." his dad sighs. He sounds tired, and that makes it even harder to look his way. Because Stiles knows his father is sad too. Stiles knows, because he sees the way his dad's shoulders shake when he turns away from him and he hears the clinking of bottles when he thinks Stiles is asleep. He doesn't want to be another bother on his father’s long list of them. But he just can't make himself eat the meal before him.

He hears his dad's chair being pushed back, the feet of it scraping against the floor, and assumes he's gone to clear the table. That's why he is completely taken by surprise when a wary hand lands on his shoulder. He jumps, turning on reflex, but catches himself just in time before he can meet his father's gaze.

His hands are shaking where they are laid in his lap and he feels the terrible lump in his throat form again as his dads thumb strokes circles into his stiff back. Stiles waits for him to speak up. Knows what he's going to say, because everybody is telling him the same things these days. They tell him that it's going to get better. They tell him that it's alright to be sad and they tell him to he's allowed to feel whatever he wants.

But how can they say that when they don't really know?

They're not used to waking up to a kiss on the cheek and a sweater laid out for them on the chair by the desk. They're not used to her perfume leaving a faint smell in the bathroom every morning and they're not used to her hands combing through their hair during those afternoons that they sit on the couch together.

So how can they tell him that it'll get better, that it's going to be alright, when they don't even know what it feels like to have an empty wound carved in their chest that aches with every breath you take? When every pair of eyes you meet makes your own tear up and that your house feels like a mausoleum and everything feels like stepping on glass?

He wants to be angry but he doesn't know who to blame. So he blames himself.

He swipes at his nose again, accidently jostling the table as he pulls his arm up and a couple of peas scatter on the tabletop surface.

"Stiles. If you could just..." His dad trails off, and Stiles feels something on his shoulders getting even heavier when he hears his father’s grief. Maybe it's the hand resting there.

"If you could just tell me what you want me to do, and I swear to god I'll do it."

He knows it's unfair when he finally lets his eyes flicker in his dad's direction and feels them well up immediately. But nothing's fair for him either and he's angry, or maybe he's just sad. He doesn't really know about that for sure.

He knows one thing though.

"I want her back." He sniffles as he whispers his request and for a second his father's grip on his shoulder tightens. The Sheriff closes his eyes and takes a deep breath as Stiles clasps his hands into fists where they rest on his thighs.

"I w-want-" Stiles says, "I want for it to stop hurting."

When his dad opens his eyes again, there are tears there too, just like in Stiles'.

"Please dad." His voice gets thinner. He knows his dad can't do anything but he also knows that usually parents can solve everything. Like when he scraped his knee when he and Scott went biking and his mother hugged him until it stopped feeling bad. Maybe this is like that too.

Because truth is Stiles' hasn't hugged anyone since he watched the line on the monitor beside his mother's hospital bed flatten out three days ago, and when his dad crouched down in front of him in the hallway outside half an hour later, _too late_ , and tried, he had ripped away, taking two steps back. But he thinks that if his father tried right now maybe he wouldn't do that.

"I miss her too." His dad says instead of answering him, but somehow that's answer enough.

He swallows as he watches his father's eyes flicker over his face, and suddenly something warm is spreading in from his stomach, all the way out to the tips of his fingers, and he hadn't noticed before, but he has been feeling so cold. It doesn't hurt less, and he wonders if it ever will, but whatever it is that sprigs at his father's word seems to make it just a tiny bit more bearable.

And Stiles can't find his voice. But he can find his hands and arms that are now warm and he can feel his bottom lip as it starts to wobble when he throws them around his father's neck and buries his face into the familiar smell and sturdy shoulder that reminds of promises and feeling safe. And as his dads arms wind around him, big and strong, pressing him close, he cries, but this time it’s making him lighter instead of a hundred pounds heavier.

**Then.**

 

"Does anyone know the answer?"

Lydia’s hand shoots up in the air. She's twelve years old, her hair reaches just above her elbow and she knows the inner working faculties of the government by heart. She sits straighter in her chair, fixing their substitute with a confident look where he stands in front of the class at the board.

She knows all of the answers to everything they ask. She always knows, even at times like this, before the rundown the teachers always has when they enter a new subject. She glances around, noting that there are no other hands in the air, _only_ Lydia's and that gives her a rush of satisfaction that tickles in her chest. It's great.

The substitute’s eyes graze the classroom, looking for someone to call in silence before he turns to nod in Lydia's direction as if to tell her to go ahead and answer.

She's just about to speak up, recite the first sentences of the third amendment when someone else beats her to it.

"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."

Stiles Stilinski's voices ring out clear from the seat right behind hers. She turns around, irked by his mere appearance, because she was supposed to be the only one to know this, so why does he?

She narrows her eyes at him as the substitute, Mark, claps his hands together.

"That's great Stiles!"

There's a twitch in Stiles shoulder, acknowledging the praise, but he's looking defiantly back at Lydia while he gets it, and so that's all the indication he gives that he's heard.

It's like this a lot. A silent competition between the two of them, although all Lydia ever does to admit that it's actually still in ongoing is to glare at him or sneer in his general direction whenever the chance is given. Because reality is; Lydia shouldn't really be paying Stiles Stilinski any attention at all.

" _What_?" He mouths at her, arms crossed and his new haircut leaving his face bare in a way she's not used to. Not that she's used to looking at him at all.

Her brow furrows, her lips purse, and then she turns around so fast that her hair flies around her shoulders in a way she knows he looks at even when he pretends to hate, hate, hate her.

He's just so annoying. Every time he does something her gut coils with annoyance and her tongue prepares mean words for her to spout. She almost never says anything, because that would mean he's getting to her, and he isn't. Nothing gets to Lydia. She's twelve and she's untouchable.

But then he knows things, knows things only she is supposed to know. And alright, she always wins this ongoing competition, and she always knows more, (knows the most,) and he never bothers her at recess, which is good. But sometimes she thinks that maybe it's not annoyance that curls in her stomach when he knows, sometimes it feels strangely familiar to the feeling she gets right before she has to turn on her night-light so it's not dark anymore, and sometimes when she meets those stupidly big and earnest eyes of his she gets the feeling he knows the answer to something more than the question he's just answered. Like how he sometimes lets her have it, although she _knows_ he knows the answer, because he understands that she needs this.

Needs to know the answers and needs to be in control, because at home she can't control anything when she hears her parents yell at each other downstairs. Can only concentrate harder on the book in her hands to try and drown them out.

Lydia ignores it for the time being though. Because Mark has just asked another question, and she says the answer out loud without raising her hand, and gets away with it thanks to the sweet smile she attaches at the end of it. When Mark tells her 'good job' she doesn't turn around to boast at him, instead she smiles smugly down at her worksheet and juts down the right words.

She doesn't care when he pushes past out to the schoolyard at recess without as much as a look in her direction, instead laughing at something Scott McCall has said. She doesn't care about what result he gets on their math homework later that afternoon and she doesn't care when she sees him waiting alone on the bench outside of school later for his dad to come pick him up, because Stiles is always the last one left.

She doesn't care. Lydia Martin is twelve years old, and she's already beginning to understand everything in a way she sometimes wishes she didn't.

 

**Then.**

 

" _My great condolences. Lydia Martin."_ Lydia prints down on the card that's being passed around the classroom, with loopy g: s and neat letters.

It's quiet for once, probably because no one actually knows what to say. Because this morning as they had arrived to school and Stiles desk had gaped empty, Mrs. T informs them that Stiles Stilinski's mother has passed away. Lydia doesn't know what to make of it, and thinks about it as the week goes a long and his desk is continuously empty, saying a lot by saying nothing at all. She thinks it's strange that all of the adults keep saying she's passed away. As if she's merely has walked out the door, as if it was her choice. She's dead, Lydia knows. So why can't they just say it?

She mulls over it the entire week, and for once she comes to no conclusions, no great insights or new discoveries. It just makes something sad snare around her throat and so she tries to not think of it anymore, but can't seem to stop. She likes knowing, likes being smart, but she doesn't know what to make of this. So she can't stop thinking about it.

When he arrives back to school the next Monday, the classroom is even quieter than it was when they got the news. Mrs. T rubs his arm and whispers something in his ear as he sits rigid, arms folded across his chest, hood drawn up over his head and brow permanently set into a frown.

It's as if he's caught some sort of disease. Suddenly pathways part for him in the hallways and no one has the guts to meet his eye. No one except Scott McCall, who seems to glare at anyone that dare come near his best friend. He's not very intimidating in the fuzzy green sweater he wears, brown eyes and crooked jaw, but no one makes a comment about that.

But then another week passes, and then one more, and soon everyone seems to have forgotten. Lydia forgets as well. She stops thinking about the circles under his eyes that now seems permanent or about how he doesn't smile. It just becomes ordinary. How things are.

She starts curling her hair, and then Amanda does too and soon she thinks about that instead. She tells Amanda that her hair is too short to look good in curls and ignores the pang in her gut when she sees her eyes turning watery. It's not her problem. None of it is. New things become ordinary. Like the icy silence at home, instead of the loud voices.

She counts every new thing that changes, like how all of the girls are starting to wear bras and how pretty is better than smart. Equation after equation. She counts and solves, and when she checks to see how her calculations are playing out, she's always right. Her parents file for divorce papers. One right. Amanda starts wearing her hair straight. Another right. Jackson starts paying more attention when she puts on lipstick. Yet another right.

 

“Remove yourself.”

She looks up to find Stiles staring down at her from where she’s sat in the furthest back seats of the bus with her friends. Their moms had all agreed the week before, that it was time for the girls to start riding the school-bus, and they had all complied with groans and snarky voices, but had in all secrecy been excited. Independence is key, and all of their parents were just _so_ uncool. But right now, Stiles Stilinski is stood over her, frowny in the usual sense and towering in the tiny area that’s provided for standing.

“Why would I?” She snaps at him, and his arms fly out as he rolls his eyes.

“Because that’s my seat.” He tells her, and that’s _right_. Stiles have been riding the bus for at least a couple of months now. She spots Scott McCall’s puppy face over his shoulder, and raises a brow.

“It’s not like you’ve legally claimed it.” She remarks and he huffs out an irritated groan, brown eyes cold as they meet hers.

“You can’t just take anything you want Lydia.” He exclaims, and her throat tightens suddenly at his words. Her hands smooths down over her skirt and she narrows her eyes at him. He should know this isn’t how things work. That he can’t just come up to her and expect her to give.

“Oh it won’t kill you to sit somewhere else Stiles.” She grits at him, and then her eyes grow wide a second later when she realizes what she’s said. It won’t kill him. Dead. Death. For some reason it feels taboo to mention anything like that around Stiles, as if he’s going to take ill just by hearing the word. But his mother had died and Lydia feels as if she’s messed up. The small area around them grows tense as they’ve seemingly caught onto their argument.

He stares at her, but to her surprise something in the amber pools of his eyes softens, and his hands that had been curled into fists, slowly unwinds as he peers at her through a thick layer of lashes. Unexpectedly, he blinks at her a few times and then sighs as he shifts on his feet.

“Fine.” He relents. “For this time I guess.” He gives in easily, far too easily. She feels unfocused, a little but unhinged as he moves to turn away. An exception is occurring in front of her, and she automatically observes, because exceptions are rare and important to paint a more accurate picture of reality. Stiles nods at her, “Martin.” He says in lieu of goodbye and then; Exception, another equation, her answer; for once wrong.

Stiles Stilinski smiles.

 

**Now.**

 

"What are you looking at?"

Lydia snaps out of her haze, coming back to the current now; sitting with Allison at one of the lunch-tables in the cafeteria. Allison turns to glance over her shoulder and Lydia realizes that shit. She'd been staring.

"Were you?..." Allison quirks an eyebrow and picks at her sandwich as if even the question seems unlikely. "Were you staring at Stiles Stilinski?" She asks and Lydia, suddenly nervous, sits up straighter and fixes Allison with a cool unimpressed look.

"Of course not."

Allison's eyes narrow just slightly but it's enough to scare her stunned for some reason. Which alright, isn’t that strange, because Allison can be shit-scary sometimes.

"No?" She asks suspiciously, and Lydia swallows.

"No." She replies, trying to make her voice flat and sound certain.

Allison holds her gaze for a moment longer, seemingly not entirely convinced, but then drops it in favor of another topic. "So were going to Greenberg's party this Friday, right?" She says, and it's not really a question.

Lydia shrugs, it's not that she doesn't want to go; it's just that she doesn't care.

"I guess." She offers, leaning over the table to steal a grape from the box Allison brought to lunch. Allison nods absentmindedly and looks down at her phone.

"Great."

And then, with Allison's scrutinizing gaze no longer upon her, her own drifts again.

Stilinski is sitting a few tables away, back against her but gesticulating widely enough for her to catch a glimpse of the side of his face now and then.

He said it like he knew her and it irks her to the bone, because he knows nothing about her. They don't know each other and yet it felt like her layers of make-up had been wiped off and her heels had been discarded as he pushed past her the other day.

She chews slowly, eyelids drooping a little as she makes a list in her mind, of how to finish up her business with him.

Step one: confrontation.

Step two: Demand th-

"You _are_ staring at Stiles Stilinski!"

Allison's voice is accusing, but as Lydia's eyes snap over to her again there is a smug smirk pulling at the corners of her mouth, while Lydia, wide eyes with being caught again, says again;

"Of course not."

Allison seems much less convinced this time.

 

**Then.**

 

He doesn’t care about Lydia Martin. Never has, never will. He does. Not. Care. He doesn’t care about the pale yellow dress she wore to school the other today or that Jacob DeMarco had whispered about Danny walking in on her and Jackson making out.

He doesn’t care.

Only, when he lies back on his bed, after having meticulously made it to keep himself occupied, his mind is ungratefully invaded by her face and her voice as she had held her presentation about the industrial revolution earlier today in front of the class.

Lydia Martin at fifteen is methodical, accurate and educational as she stands before the class. Her shirt is impeccably ironed and her hair in perfect waves around her frame. Unlike the rest of them had been; red in the face, uncomfortable in their own skin and stammering as they presented their projects. She’s put together, graceful and smart.

He lingers at the memory of her hands moving, with just a bit too wide gestures to be played off as uncaring. She builds inside of him, like the cities she’d been speaking off. She has been since he was seven years old. It’s methodical in itself, like an art form. But instead of the cities being cramped and dirty, like it had been during the industrial revolution, the metropolitan building inside of his chest is clean and kept, and on its streets wanders only her. He builds and builds for her and she doesn’t have to wring the profit from his stiff fingers, instead he pushes it into her arms willingly, only to watch it clatter to the ground a moment later.

He sighs in resignation as his neck thumps back against his pillows and he stares up at the roof of his room, because that is so not what he should be thinking about, seeing as he does not care.

He knows it’s not her fault. The only way she faults in his eyes is by the way she doesn’t. She’s a perfect imperfection and he can’t seem look away. But he doesn’t want to see. Not when it hurts like this. God, does he wish he didn’t care about Lydia fucking Martin.

His throat feels tight and his hands resting on his stomach clumsy as he pulls a little on the hem of his shirt. So he cares. But he does not want to. That’s sort of a start he guesses.

He can keep on building from that, away from her.

He loves her street inside of him though. It’s grand and pretty and she has a townhouse of her own there, where the lights are always on. Thing about that is; he’s always left outside, never allowed in through her door. He cares. His eyes linger too long on her hair as it bounces when she walks away from him and he knows the sound of her voice too well. But she doesn’t care back.

It settles like soft summer rain over him. Drenching and unescapable. She doesn’t care. So from now on he’ll try not to either.

He falls asleep eventually.

He dreams of grand hallways and stuffy chairs by fireplaces inside of a velvet-roofed townhouse. He looks in every single room, but it’s completely vacant. Warm sunlight flits in, like an afternoon rest. He moves over to one of the arched windows to peer outside, and when his hands grip the windowsill, he sees her. She’s standing out in the street, staring at the door painted red, her dress is plastered against her skin and she is utterly, dripping, wet.

 

**Now.**

 

There are red solo cups littered on the poorly lit pavement outside Greenberg's house, a heavy thump vibrating from the speakers in the backyard and a couple making out on the porch as Lydia and Allison arrives with a few other girls from their classes Friday night.

"I heard the whole Lacrosse team's here." Someone of them says in a hushed voice loaded with awe that makes Lydia wants to roll her eyes. She doesn't though, because reality is she's not really allowed considering the thing she had going with the team captain a couple of years back.

That she's aware apparently does her no favors in the social jungle that is High School, which is why she decided long ago it's better to play along.

So instead of rolling her eyes she smiles viciously to their small group as she smooths her hands down the skirt she's wearing.

"Let’s go." She says, and then naturally, they start moving.

A wall of music and voices accompanied with the smell of alcohol and weed hits them as they walk inside. Immediately there are eyes on them and she feels confident in the way her high ponytail swishes behind her and in the way her body feels in her dress.

She does what she knows best as they start to make their way inside the house. She looks at the right people, ignores those who are deemed to be ignored and walks with a sway in her hips. It feels like power.

Suddenly Allison's warm breath washes over her cheek and her voice speaks in Lydia's ear as she tries to be heard over the music.

"I'm gonna go and-" she trails of as Lydia turns to her and gestures into the living room where Isaac Lahey is making heart eyes at her and this time Lydia actually rolls her eyes. She makes waves her hand noncommittally his direction.

"Yeah, yeah. Go make him feel in pain." She says and Allison actually smiles genuinely at that.

"I'm gonna go grab a drink." She lets Allison know. She nods and reaches out quickly, squeezing Lydia's hand in her own for a moment before disappearing into the living room.

Lydia smirks at her back for a moment before turning on her heels to walk the opposite direction, into the kitchen.

It's crowded in there too, and there are enough bottles to make a small nation mildly drunk. She's already had a few drinks however, so she pours herself a mild vodka sprite and takes a few sips before she feels ready to really take part of the party going on around her. She takes her drink in hand and sighs loudly as she has to push past a cheerleader and another Lacrosse player groping each other, more at the cliché than the actual physical inconvenience.

She spots Jackson as soon as she walks into the living room. Captain of the Lacrosse team makes you a popular event at a party, and with a face like his it nearly makes him a locality. He's looking at her as she walks in though, and that's worth something on a completely different level than she could ever explain to someone else.

She's just about to send him a coy smile, just about to walk over just to ignore him, when something catches in the corner of her eye.

It's him. It's Stiles.

He's sitting on the living room couch, and that's _right_ , he's on the lacrosse team, and although a bench warmer it still means party invitations. He's talking to someone, a pretty brunette Lydia recognizes as Malia, and really, it's _too bad_ Lydia isn't even aware she's already walking over, Jackson long forgotten in a corner, and it's _too bad_ that she's clearly interrupting something and really, everything's just _too bad_. But not her, not Lydia. She'll be good.

And that's why she's now standing in front of him, clearing her throat and crossing her arms.

She's there to right a wrong.

He closes his eyes briefly as she makes her presence clear, then he takes a deep breath before slowly turning towards her.

"What now?" He asks words cold but his eyes can't seem to be cruel. Haven't since they were thirteen.

That's typical for brown eyes, she disregards. Brown eyes look kind and mediocre. But she's had a few drinks and maybe his eyes are a bit more of an amber color? She doesn't really know. All she knows is that she needs to do this so she can stop feeling more bothered than usual over his presence in her near vicinity.

But he blinks up at her and suddenly he is painted in sunlight, standing with flowers in his hands at the cemetery, and there is a tightness in her chest telling her that she's stumbled upon a story she shouldn't interrupt.

Ridiculous, of course. So she ignores it. She ignores the clear look of annoyance on Malia's face and raises her chin.

"Oh you know what." She states and of course he does. He's not stupid, and isn't that the problem?

For a second she thinks that he's really going to tell her to fuck off. Her. Lydia Martin. But then she sees him resign.

"I'm sorry. Give me a minute." The words are meant for Malia as he shoves the sleeves of his flannel higher up to reveal sinewy forearms that she's never really thought of in combination with his hands before. Whatever. She swallows, willing her eyes away as he stands up towering her and gesturing towards the doorway.

"Make that a few minutes." She smiles sweetly to Malia who looks about ready to start ripping extensions. Luckily, Lydia doesn't have any.

His hand hovers over the small of her back as they start making their way out of the room towards the front door. The porch is vacant as they step outside into the cool air, the couple making out earlier clearly having moved on to a more private location and the rest of the attendees choosing the backyard area before the front steps.

It's quiet in a way that jarring compared to the loud noise from inside. It's quiet so suddenly, and it takes her by surprise. Her dress feels wrong out here with him. She pulls at it by the hem tries to cover up, feeling exposed and bare in the small piece of fabric.

She feels naked in another way when she takes notice of how he's looking nowhere but at her eyes.

"You didn't let me apologize to you the other day." She states, not knowing how else to start this conversation that feels like it's been long due before she drove past the graveyard.

He looks calmly into her eyes for a moment, and it almost feels like he's searching for something there, sincerity perhaps, but before she's able to decrepit it he turns away and leans forward, turning his head towards the poorly lit street in front of the house instead, hands supporting him on the railing that surrounds the porch.

"I don't need you to."

His words are quiet and steady, and his eyes flutter closed as he lets them pass his lips.

She feels wrong with her hands hanging by her sides awkwardly and the sincerity he may have been looking for aching in her throat. They haven't really spoken in years, she seems to be angry at him for no reason at all and something thumps sadly in her chest as she thinks about it.

They've not been intended to catch each other in intimate, tender moments, but faith as tripped them more than once it seems, and this what she gets out of it. They work fine with trying to outdo each other and not looking anywhere near where the other is stood. She's fine with him as an obnoxious pain in the ass in ugly button-ups. She's not fine with him, bouquet in hand and in-focus in front of the tombs, or him ten years old waiting for his dad to come pick him up.

"What if I want to?" She whispers back.

His back stiffens when she does, and for a second she thinks they might say something that actually matters. Then however, he stands up and shakes his head, allowing her a quiet defeat. ´

"That's not necessary. It's not for you to be sorry about." He says finally, and then, he looks at her. There's a small smile on his lips but his eyes are sad.

He straightens up, goes for the door, and hand on handle he turns back one last time.

"We're okay Lydia. Really." He says, and with that, he's gone again and Lydia is left standing alone, wondering why she cares now, or if she did all along.

 

**Then.**

 

"Lydia! Hey, Lydia!" he hurries towards her, the new Spiderman comic in hand and a big smile painted on his lips. She looks around, distressed, as if making sure no one noticing his approach. To her relief no one is paying their corner of the classroom any closer attention at the moment, and Stiles wouldn't mind the whole world watching them, for what it's worth.

"What?" She hisses, lips pursed, as he comes to a stop in front of her.

He hesitates for a second. Because they're not really friends and Lydia seems to be picky about that sort of thing. But then he can't help it from bubbling up on his tounge and he flails just a bit as he slaps the comic down in front of her on the desk and starts flicking through it at an alarmingly high speed.

"I was just reading this and," he pauses what he's about to say for a moment, shifting through another page, "Mary-jane dies by the way," he adds offhandedly while his eyes search the page. Lydia scoffs at his comment, rolling her eyes.

"Nice." She comments coldly, but he ignores this, continuing unbothered. "And I was just thinking..." He trails of as he finds the spread he was looking for. It's a bit sad he supposes. Mary-jane is lying un-moving in Peter's arms and on the next page you find out about her apparent death, but that's not what he is fixating on at the moment.

"Look." He jabs his finger down on the page with an excited grin. He knows he gets easily excited about stuff. His mother says it's nothing wrong with it, but his dad has advised him to try and play it down in public. Right now though he has just come to the conclusion that Lydia and Mary-jane has practically the same hair color and if that's not something to be excited about then Stiles don't know what is.

"You have the same hair!" He exclaims proudly, because he was the one that found it out after all. It dies a little in his throat however, when he looks up at her stiff frame and sees her staring down at the picture with an unreadable expression.

"I'm not some helpless dying girl." She informs him, voice like iron. She meets his eye and there's a new steeliness there that has Stiles hand dropping from the comic to rest still by his side instead. Lydia looks mad and that was not at all his intention. Her eyes move back to the spread and there's a look of disgust on her face as she watches it, and what a few seconds ago was an unbelievable, too-good-to-be-true finding now seems to be easier likened with cold water dripping down his back.

Lydia looks back up again, look of disdain staying on her face as her eyes climb up his face. She flicks her hair, puts her hands on her sides and with a confident flip of hair she leaves him hanging together with another piece of information.

"And my hair's not red. It's strawberry blonde."

She turns on her heel and marches away from him, with strawberry blonde hair gleaming in the sun. She's got it all wrong though, he thinks as his eyes flick back down to the picture in front of him, sinking sensation in his belly. Mary-jane is kind of awesome. She's smart and strong and really cool and he thinks Lydia is all of those things as well. But just as he's about to call after her to tell her this, he looks up again and she's jumping onto a chair next to Sarah Parker and Jackson Whittemore and he knows, buried deep in his gut, that they've got something he apparently doesn't when it comes to Lydia.

So he curls his fist, rolls up his comic and turns to find Scott again. Scott loves Spiderman.

 

**Now.**

 

"Lydia! Hey!"

She turns abruptly as she hears her name being called out. She registers who it is that has called it only when his chest collides with her.

One of Stiles' hands shoot out to close around her upper arm and steady her, and she feels disoriented by the smell of laundry detergent and deodorant as he stays close for a second.

"Sorry." He mumbles, hand retreating back to his side as soon as he's made sure she's steady. She feels a little breathless as she straightens up, meeting his gaze.

"That's um-" his eyes are tired today.

"That's alright." She manages pressing her books tight against her chest.

They stare at each other for another moment, before he seems to recognize that they don't really talk to each other and then he startles into action.

"Yeah sorry," he starts,

"I just thought- well, you left your book in class and none of your friends seemed to notice so I just-" he lifts his right hand towards her and only now does she recognize her copy of Wuthering Heights in it from English.

"Here." He says, and she takes it from him carefully, his fingers brushing against hers as she does.

"Oh." Her voice sounds stupidly light and she doesn't know why.

"Thank you."

He nods. "That's- um. That’s alright."

They stand opposite another for another moment, and she's unsure of what to say. He shoves his hands into his pocket, eyes flickering over her shoulder down the hall and he sways he little on his feet.

"Yeah so I should probably-"

"You've got Econ with me in five minutes, don't you?" She hears herself interrupt him as he aims to leave, and finds she doesn't want him to. He stills a little, eyes back on her as he sniffs once, look in his eye unreadable.

"Yeah." He confirms. "I do."

She nods, gathering herself. She’s got this. This could be a way of smoothing over what happened last week, crinkling out what seems to have put a dent to her fluency.

"So walk with me." She says, and he nods in agreement after a second, not that she's giving him much choice if he doesn’t want to make things really awkward.

They fall into step beside each other, lazy afternoon sun filtering in through the windows of the hallway as they go, making their shadows long behind them. It's relatively empty in the corridor and she tampers on the urge she has to glance over her shoulder.

"It really sucks." He speaks up suddenly, bowing his head a little so that he can look her in the eye. Her line of thought stammers a little as she tries to grasp what he's referring to.

"I mean, Heathcliff is obviously an idiot but I mean... I don't think I can name a single person in that book that I have sympathy for." He continues, and she blinks as she realizes he's talking about her book.

"You've read Wuthering Heights?" She asks, for some reason surprised by it. She wouldn't have pinned him for the type. She certainly isn’t, but it was the only one on their list of choices she hadn’t read.

"Yeah, or..." he goes on, shrugging as he glances out of the window.

"My mom used to read them to me. I think I could literally quote anything Mr. Darcy has ever said out of memory." He chuckles at the memory and she feels herself straining as she listens attentively. She thinks it’s a peace offering, him telling her this, and she wants to clamp it in her palm, press it close to her heart. She hums in response, and soon they fall into a somewhat comfortable silence as they walk down the hall.

“So how far have you gotten on that Biology thing?” She asks him a couple of moments later, and he glances at her sideways, eyebrows raised and smiling a little. “I’ll go ahead and be honest here and inform you that I had no idea there was a Biology thing I needed to get started on.” She snorts and his grin grows.

“It’s due the day after tomorrow.” She informs him, and his eyes blink wider. She pushes her books closer to her chest and hides her smile by pressing her lips together. “Are you like, trying to shit me or something?” He asks, eyes narrowing and her brow shoots up.

“What do you take me for?”

He smirks as he opens his mouth to reply but she rolls her eyes and beats him to it. “Don’t answer that.” She begs him flatly and he chuckles a little. “Sure.” He agrees easily.

“But seriously, how screwed am I?” He asks a beat later as they take a right down another hallway. She smiles sweetly at him as they near the classroom.

“I’ll go ahead and be honest here and inform you that you are in fact, utterly screwed.” She tells him and he deadpans but groans.

“Shit.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

She watches him wince, and hesitates, but only for a second. She considers it a peace offering.

“I could help you?” She says, and then quickly adds; “If you want I mean. I’m almost finished anyways and so-“

“Really?” They stop outside of the classroom and she glances inside at their classmates before looking back to him.

“Yeah, sure.” She says, clutching at her books yet again as she feels exposed somehow.

“That’d be great.” He says, voice quieter than before and his hand falling on the knob of the door.

“So…” She draws the word out. “Meet me in the quad after lunch? All seniors have free period then, right?”

He nods, expression once again unreadable as he opens the door.

“It’s a date Martin.” He answers lamely, and god knows why, her cheeks flushes as she quickly slips in before him, hiding her face behind a curtain of hair.

 

**Now.**

 

“She asked _you_?”

Stiles can tell by Scott’s voice that he’s trying really hard to not let his disbelief shine through. Stiles can also tell that Scott seems to momentarily have forgotten that they have been best friends _forever_ and that Stiles knows all his tells.

He gets it though. This is Lydia Martin, the girl he obsessed over until age fifteen where he then abruptly stopped. Scott is just a bit confused as to this newly turn of events, and god knows he’s not alone in that temporary confusion. He’s starting to fear it may not even _be_ temporary.

“Yeah, it’s weird. I know.”

Scott brow furrows as he shuts his locker and they begin walking out of the school towards his Jeep.

“But-like.” He begins, hand held up as if to try and slow the whole thing down a little. “You don’t exactly know each other, right?” Scott questions and Stiles shrugs and rolls his eyes. “It’s Beacon Hills man, everyone knows everyone.” He concludes as they climb into the Jeep.

Scott sighs in recognition of this fact. “Well that’s true.” He agrees easily. They’re quiet for a while as he pulls out from the school parking lot and takes a left turn out on the road, the town where they grew up passing them by in vivid color. Vivid color in reality, although it seems to him gray all the same, dull and worn.

His mind, of course, strays to Lydia as she sat across from him at one of the tables in the quad earlier. It feels like a faraway memory already. Like something he has held close to his heart for a long time, grasped and folded until it’s faded and tinted in sepia. But it was just two hours ago, and although the conflicting feeling of it feels faded and folded, the actual image is stark, detailed and sharp.

She had been laughing about something he’d said and as he thinks about it his throat feel tight all of a sudden, and a cold hard vice seems to pull around his lungs. There is something about it that he can’t quite give into, something that makes him feel guarded, calculating and unexplainably sad. It’s too easy, feels too much like he has already surrendered, it hits too close to home.

He does not care. Giving in only means it’ll hurt again, and the threat of it is so familiar that he almost longs for a time when it was a constant, not a suddenly sharp stab out of nowhere.

“You sort of always acted as if you do though.” Scott says after a couple of minutes, somber voice and eyes set on the road.

“What?” Stiles blinks, not following.

“As if you know each other.” Scott clarifies.

Stiles feels his himself frown, but he doesn’t look over.

“What do you mean?”

Scott is quiet for yet another moment, as if trying to find the right words. He seems almost careful, and it makes Stiles feel wary. There is a rigid and stony place inside of him that crumbles a little every second Scott drags his answer out. A place he has actively ignored for quite some time now. It’s a ghost town, and Scott is stepping foot into it right now, acting as if he knows the streets by heart while Stiles had thought it were since long abandoned.

“You- I mean you two seem to know how to ignore each other in just the right way to make the other one feel comfortable, y’know?” Scott tries to explain as he fingers on the dashboard in front of him. “And sometimes when you… It’s like- I don’t know if that makes sense, but…”

Stiles swallows, grip on the wheel tightening, because he wasn’t excepting the answer to involve the both of them. Lydia has never noticed him, never paid him any attention. Not until now, when he has caught her wrong and red handed, something he once would’ve dreamed of but that now feels like cheating for some inextinguishable reason.

But the fleeting realization that comes with Scott’s words scorches through him for a second, that maybe that’s not entirely true. It makes his grip on the wheel tighten further, because he’s been doing so well, with forgetting that the place inside of him labelled with her name existed, and this can’t be allowed to change that. Even if she seems genuine now, he can’t push the feeling of an exterior motive that she’ll be able to dangle in front of him later, when he’s bared out and naked and everyone is staring right through him.

He does not care. Not like that. Not anymore. The brilliance of her burns around him in the small town that is Beacon Hills, but he decided long ago not to let himself be further jarred by it.

“No dude, it doesn’t.” He swallows as Scott’s eyes find his face.

Stiles continues to glare forward, refusing to look away from the road disappearing beneath the Jeep. He feels Scott’s gaze on the side of his face, and can’t push the feeling of that he seem to momentarily have forgotten that they have been best friends _forever,_ and that Scott knows all his tells.

 

**Then.**

 

“Lydia, you go with Stiles.”

She wants to groan out loud, nearly does, but then settles on rolling her eyes towards Jessica Jones whom nods in understanding.

“Why can’t we just choose our own partners?” She grumbles, seemingly to no one, but loud enough for their teacher to pipe up with her shrill voice.

“These are great opportunities to develop your team work and get to know your classmates better Lydia!”

Again, Lydia settles on rolling her eyes as she drags her feet over to where Stiles is standing, looking unsurely around the room and pulling the cap on and off on a marker.

“Hey.” He says as she comes to stand next to him, and she can tell he’s trying to be cool about it. She folds her arms over her chest and sighs as they wait to be assigned their task. He scuffs his converse against the linoleum floor and she pouts as she traces a line along the ceiling with slightly narrowed eyes.

“I- um.” He starts, and she turns slightly towards him, not really wanting to admit that he’s got her attention. “I think it’s lame too.” He finally says, pronouncing the words carefully as if afraid they will stumble over each other. “That we don’t get to pick partners I mean.” He follows up quickly and she blinks a few times.

She glances over to him, and he’s staring at the marker in his hands, which is probably why she feels safe enough to offer him a curt nod in response.

“Yeah.”

They get assigned to paint the banner that’s supposed to hang over the board at the front of the classroom and Mrs. T informs them that the color-theme is going in blue and orange.

“Blue and orange?” Lydia questions sourly as she nods down at them, pushing pencils and colors into their hands.

“Yes dear, blue and orange.” She confirms, smiling towards where the fifth-graders teacher Greg, is stood. His class is on a field trip with another teacher, and so he’s chaperoning, something that seems to suit Mrs. T just fine as she waggles her fingers and pushes her chest out when he looks over.

“It’s not a good combination.” Lydia argues, feeling her expression getting stormy as she jut out her hip a little, lifting her chin in defiance. It really isn’t.

“Sure it is. Now hurry along you two.” Mrs. T answers them, sounding a little breathy as she flutters her eyelashes down Greg’s direction. He’s newly divorced, Lydia knows, and Mrs. T is painfully single. It looks ridiculous, is ridiculous, and she isn’t paying Lydia’s criticism any attention.

“But it’s not going to-“She continues, and finally their teacher turns towards them, although seemingly not at all in the mood and interrupting her in the middle of her sentence.

“That’s quite enough Lydia. It’s going in blue and orange and I will have no more snobby remarks from you today, understood?”

Lydia’s mouth falls open and her eyes sting suddenly. She snaps it closed, feeling her eyes growing wide as Mrs. T glares at her and then nods mutely. Their teachers have never been angry with her before. All of them love her. They’re _supposed_ to love her.

“Now go.” She orders and Lydia feels a warm hand brush her elbow from behind her slightly to the right.

“Come on.” Stiles says quietly. Feeling numb at being scolded she simple obliges his request, and he trails after her out of the classroom to the empty studio room they had been allowed to work in.

She stops, feeling a little askew and not quite right as the door falls shut behind them, and watches as Stiles gets to work, laying out the fabric of the banner and piling the pencils beside it. She stares as he goes along and opens the colors and tries to not make the banner crinkle. When he’s done he straightens up and turns to her, expectant look on his face and one of the large pencils clutched in his right hand.

She tires too quickly to cover up, forcing out her mask of indifference and her look of disdain.

“I’m not going to get splattered.” She warns him as she bends down to pick up a pencil. He blinks at her.

“Alright.” He nods.

“Blue and orange isn’t a good combination.” She pressures her point further, as if to convince him. As if to prove herself right. As if to remain in control and maintain her carefully designed persona. She knows he can tell it’s fabricated, and is immensely thankful he doesn’t remark on it.

They stare at each other for a moment longer, and there is something in him across from her that reminds her of delicate china, the fluorescents shine down on his prominent cheekbones and she feels dangerously fragile herself as she thinks about things she can’t control.

Like the boxes with her father’s things packed inside them by the door and how Natalie doesn’t seem to notice anything anymore, no matter how much Lydia pushes her food around her plate and puts on challenging outfits. She’s thirteen and feels too old to paint a stupid Earth Day banner and too mature to break this easily. He stares at she can feel her bottom lip is just about to start wobbling when he speaks up again.

“Let’s make it really ugly.” He says, brows arching suggestively and her furrowing at his proposal.

“What?” She manages; glancing down at the still empty banner and feeling her fingers get a little clammy around the shaft of the pencil before she looks up again. This time when she meets his eyes there is a small, mischievous smirk there to accompany it.

“The banner,” He explains, nodding down towards it. “Let’s make it really fucking ugly to piss her off.” He propositions and slowly her shoulders melt down from their rigid positions and she feels something pull in the corner of her mouth as well. She stares at the empty banner for a second longer, then at him.

“Okay.” She says, and it feels good to agree, to be back in control. “Let’s make it ugly.” She nods and his grin grows.

And so they get started. And they make the damn Earth Day banner really fucking ugly, but only so that their teacher won’t be able to say anything about it. He slobs a big ugly tree at the end of it and Lydia purposely misspells three of five words in the sentence they’ve been instructed to write upon it.

“Hav A Gret Erth Day!”

He snorts loudly as Lydia comments Greg’s current “in-between” places stay at Mrs. T’s couch and she laughs so much her belly hurts when he tells her about the time Scott and Anna Sinclair was dared to kiss behind the gym and Scott started crying afterwards thinking he’d gotten syphilis.

She gets some paint on her hands and even some on her skirt but it doesn’t really matter.

It turns out, much to their satisfaction, appallingly horrid, and Mrs. T’s smile is notably tight as she tells them great job. They stand beside each other in front of the board after getting a hand hanging it up, and smiles smugly at the slant letters.

She doesn’t really think twice as she glances over at him, and tries not to care as her gaze lingers along the lines of his face, watching him while he inspects their work with slightly narrowed eyes.

He’s nice. She knows this, despite herself. The curves of his face slope pleasantly and although too big t-shirts and untied converse she for once chooses to actively notice him. To pay attention. But it unhinges her a little. There is something unkempt about the way he cracks his knuckles, something a little too alive about the way his attentive eyes flacks over the room. He stares at her along with Jackson and Thomas and Jeff, but he never tries anything. Never offers her the reins.

After another moment of assessing him she turns back to the banner. This was nice. It was fun even. But it’ll be over soon, as soon as they part ways to go back to their respective desks across from the classroom, and as soon as Lydia goes back to actively not noticing him. He doesn’t fit, he isn’t tame and therefore they have to go.

Her eyes wander back up to the word “Erth” and she meticulously takes on the tedious duty of tampering the untamed parts chasing around her chest, her head. Cages her heart in and thinks no more of it. There isn’t time for that. It’s Alright.

They do part eventually, as Mrs. T tells the class to settle down, and she offers him a closed lipped smile before she saunters over to her chair.

She lays her head upon her arms and stares sleepily ahead as Mrs. T and Greg babble on and on about recycling and clean energy in front of the board.

Mindlessly her gaze strays up to the banner.

Mrs. T had been right.

You wouldn’t think it, but as it turns out, blue and orange _is_ a good combination. It’s even sort of perfect.

 

**Now.**

“That’s not going to happen.” She says flatly, popping another skittle into her mouth and fixing him with an unimpressed stare across from what he now considers _their_ table in the quad. They had sat down to study that one time during free period, and then, they kind of hadn’t stopped showing up.

It was a new seamless routine, which had slipped in between his already existing ones with effortless ease. Scott had gave him a certain look the first few times, but hadn’t commented, and really, that was all there had been too it.

He had no idea at all why _she_ kept showing up. Who gave her a certain look.

“Okay so it isn’t the most scientifically accurate theory-“

“God, you’re such a nerd.”

“I’m just saying there is a small chance that-“

“No Stiles.” She interrupts him, hands coming up to stop him from talking over her. He opens his mouth to protest and her brow raises warningly. “No.” She tells him, manicured nail raised warningly at him.

“No, there is not a chance in the whole freaking universe of you discovering dark matter and becoming Darth Vader.”

He gasps dramatically, clutching at his chest as she rolls her eyes.

“Darth Vader? I never said anything about _Darth freaking Vader_ Lydia!” He exclaims and she swallows another skittle pointedly.

“You implied it.” She concludes soberly, and he can’t help the grin that pulls on his lips.

“Perhaps.” He offers, and she ignores him in favor of pushing back his work-sheet with equations towards him, her scribbles filling the margins of it with notes.

“Good job,” She smiles in recognition, and his heart swells a little with the praise. “There’s only a few things that seems-“

“Hi Lydia.” Allison Argent, Lydia’s attached-by-the-hip best friend since sophomore year, pants as she slams down her bag on their table, skin still glistening in the sun from her practice with the cross-country team. “Stiles.” She nods and he salutes her in greeting. She snorts and then moves to lean down, palms flat against the tabletop surface.

“That practice was a bitch.” She lets them know as she starts rooting through her bag for something. “By the way, Lydia, I was thinking on Thursday after art-class that we could maybe-“

“Hi Stiles.” Scott chuffs, stripping of his back-pack and dropping it unceremoniously to the ground, sheen of sweat covering his forehead from the first-line practice with the Lacrosse team. “Lydia.” He nods her way and she raises her hand slowly waggling her fingers towards him before peering over at Stiles.

Leaning down on the table, stuffing his phone into his pocket, he turns to Stiles.

“Hey man, I was thinking that after we help your dad with that-“

His sentence comes to an abrupt halt as his eyes climb upwards and he finds himself faced with an equally sweaty and staring Allison. The two of them stare at each other from across the table, mouths hanging open, eyes wide, and Lydia and Stiles stare at each other beneath their arms, and by the look on Lydia’s face he’d say she’s feeling equally confused as to what was currently going down.

“Hi.” Breathes Allison eventually, voice suddenly airy and light and her lips, out of nowhere- very pouty.

“Hi.” Scott answers, sounding scruffy, and licks his lips as his biceps flex in a way they certainly hadn’t a moment earlier.

Another moment of tense silence. Stiles glances first at Scott and then at Allison.

“You’re-“ Scott begins halting a little, and Allison attaches a throaty laughter at the end of it. Lydia raises an eyebrow and suddenly Stiles has a hard time containing the laughter bubbling inside of him.

“Yes, I am.” Allison giggles and Scott chuckles in a manner Stiles has never before experienced. Not at all how he chuckles when Stiles makes a “Your mom” joke.

“So should we…?” Scott grins flirtatiously, which wow? Stiles didn’t know he could do that.

“Yes, let’s.” Allison agrees, blinding smile plastered on her face, to something apparently obvious, and then, without breaking eye contact they both pick up their bags and walk around the table to meet in the middle.

“That’s a great shirt.” Comments Allison as they begin walking away, touching suspiciously much at Scott’s bicep when trying to motion at the cut-off t-shirt he’s wearing. But Scott just laughs, and they keep on doing that as they disappear down the pathway towards the entrance of the school.

Stiles turns back to Lydia, and is somewhat relived when he finds her looking as flabbergasted as he feels.

“Do they know each other?” He asks, stage-whispering as he leans forward and juts a thumb over his shoulder at the fading sounds of their best friends.

“No.” Lydia stares dumbfounded at him. “No they don’t.” She confirms his suspicion and he leans back, trying to comprehend what the hell had just happened.

They stare at each other for another whole three seconds. And then, when Lydia opens her mouth to say something more, they begin laugh so hard that at the end of it, Lydia is clutching at her stomach and Stiles is wheezing for air.

 

**Then.**

 

She’s wearing a _short_ skirt today. Her hair is curled in promiscuous waves and her eyeshadow tints her mysterious. She’s pretty today. She’s _hot._ And yesterday she and Jackson had a fight, so today she _needs_ to feel powerful.

So this morning she had put on a short skirt and painted her lips red with great care in her vanity. She isn’t wearing it because the skirt because it’s short. She’s wearing it because she thinks it’s cute. Like how she’s painting her lips because it feels like armor. She’s a knight in shining red armor and she’s going to save this mess.

Right now though, she doesn’t feel much like a knight when Jackson ignores her as she walks up to him by his locker. She doesn’t feel very pretty, or hot. Instead, her skin feels too tight, and she gets the sensation of shrinking to fit it, of becoming smaller as she presses her lips together and comes to a stop in front of him.

His jaw sets as her she opens her mouth to speak, and as if on reflex she quickly snaps it closed again. It’s messed up, because she thought that she’d never actually love him, but as her heart thumps painfully inside her ribcage she gets the slow impending realization that she might, after all.

She stares at him, considering this as he finally turns to her, slamming his locker shut in the process. She startles, her fingers flexing as he glares back at her.

“What do you want Lydia?”

His voice comes out quiet and tight and sounds nothing like it had yesterday. Yesterday it had been loud and aggravated and matching hers as they sat in his car outside of her house.

It’s strange as she thinks back on it, that she can’t seem to remember what they’d been fighting about.

She rolls her eyes in response, because that’s what she’s supposed to do.

“Oh come on,” She snarls at him. “We’re not breaking up.” She comments offhandedly, on what until she speaks the words had seemed like an obvious fact. She’s hot and he is captain of the Lacrosse team, and they fight, sure. But they never break up and Lydia knows exactly how to make Jackson stay. Knows just what he likes and uses it just enough to make them work. She wasn’t supposed to love him but she thinks she does now.

And isn’t it sad how she realizes this now when whatever this had been between them seems to have turned ugly and a tiny bit frightening? How she says the words but feels them tighten around her throat at the same time?

“You think you’re so fucking unreplaceable Lydia.” Jackson sneers at her, closing his backpack and hoisting it up over his left shoulder. He’s not very tall, yet he seems towering as she shrinks and shrinks and shrinks beside him. “Well, surprise; you’re not.”

She swallows, feels all wrong as his words sink heavily to the bottom of her stomach like stones. “We’re not breaking up.” She parrots, but her voice is too light and she grips the strap of the bag over her shoulder unnecessarily hard as it slips out.

Jackson sighs, jaw flexing and cold gaze set somewhere behind her in the hallway. He shifts the weight from his left feet to his right, one hand coming up to dab at his already impeccable hair.

“Then stop making me feel so damn stupid all of the time.” He demands, and Lydia blinks up at him.

She looks at the sharp lines of his face and considers every time she’s attached a degrading “I think?” to the end of a sentence. Thinks of how she’s so small beside him, when her mind is ever expanding, big, and enormous, like a universe of her own gathered knowledge. She thinks about how Allison, whom she’s just getting to know but that seems so strong and sure. Thinks about who she wants to be and whom she currently are.

She licks her lips, staring into the icy blue of Jacksons eyes and then decides to stop thinking altogether as she says;

“Fine, I won’t.”

His expression relaxes, and her rabbit-heart slows down. He smiles, plays with the collar of her shirt and leans down to kiss her dryly before pulling back and telling her that he’ll see her after practice and she nods numbly, staring after him with wide eyes as he disappears down the hall.

Only when she turns to leave herself, does she notice another pair of eyes that pays a warm and soft contrast to the image of Jackson’s. Stiles Stilinski is staring at her with a crick between his brow and a carefully concerned tint to his amber irises. He’s standing a little bit further down the hallway, leaned back against his locker, and there is people passing between them, but somehow he feels too close. He has that look on his face that used to irk her back in middle school. The one that makes it seem like he knows something. Something he shouldn’t.

She pulls on her skirt, glaring back.

 _You don’t know anything._ She thinks as his finger splay over the textbook in his hands.

 _What you saw is not the truth._ She tries to inform.

It’s not. But doesn’t he understand that this is what’s easiest to do right now?

 _That’s not me._ She tells him by holding his gaze. _Not really._

He blinks and straightens up a little. _I’m still here._ She tells him.

He stands up and drops his eyes to the floor as he turns her his back. She feels desperate all of a sudden. Out of breath and itching to explain herself. _Turn around._

_See me._

_I’m still here._

But he never turns, and Lydia feels frozen in place.

 

**Now.**

 

“Would you rather… help hide the body or call the police?”

“You do realize that my father is the Sheriff?”

“Obviously.”

“Right. Just checking.”

“So?”

“Yeah well, hide the body. _Obviously_. Can’t have my own father arresting me, imagine the gossip.”

He shoots her a shit-eating grin and resumes to suck on the straw from his juice box. She rolls her eyes but doesn’t comment.

“Your turn.” She says, knocking his knee with hers beneath the table and leaning forward on her elbows. He has to take a second then. To rearrange his gaze from where it has landed on bee-stung lips and make his hands busy so that they don’t do anything stupid, like reaching for her.

He sets the juice-cartoon down on again as he mulls over it, nose scrunching up and eyes wandering around the quad.

“Prada or Chanel? If you could only use one for the rest of your life.”

He’s sure this is a tie-breaker for her, and is confirmed in his preconceived suspicions as she squawks indignantly. Her eyes narrow at him for a moment, but is then replaced by a beaming smile as she answers him smugly.

“You do realize that my dog is named Prada?”

He groans but then complies, playing along.

“Obviously.” He says, voice flat, but can’t help the amused quirk in the corner of his mouth.

“Right, just checking.” She sniggers, overly pleased with herself.

“Really Lydia?” He smirks at her and she ignores him in favor of letting out a small laugh.

“They’re both necessary, I can’t choose.”

He groans, hiding his face in his hands for a second.

“Choosing is the point of the game Lydia.” He points out, and she makes a noncommittal sound, waving her hand.

She’s really pretty today. Like every other day, _obviously_. But her deep blue sweater looks really good with that thing she does with her hair, and he has a hard time not caring. Isn’t sure he ever didn’t and is aching, heart-on-his-sleeve throbbing as he tries not to stare at her. He doesn’t know what it is they’re doing here exactly. He supposes they’re friends, because if she has an exterior motive the plot seems to be extremely exaggerated.

He tries not to over-think it, but it’s hard, seeing as over-thinking is his chosen way of life, sort of. So he tries hard not to over-think why she comes here every day to sit with him, tries really hard to not over-think why he does the same thing. He doesn’t think about the way their feet has a tendency to tangle beneath the table and doesn’t think about it when her hand brushes his, or that one afternoon when she pretended she could foretell his future by the lines in his palm and has clasped it between hers as she informed him that he’d become a unhappily divorced man at age thirty with four Rottweilers.

He doesn’t think of his actual would-you-rather’s, because truth is; there’s nowhere he’d rather be than right here with her, and the reality of that is pretty scary considering he’s spent almost three years to not have a bone-rattling, galaxy-bending crush on this girl. Turns-out; he failed on that. Not _really_ so surprising if one take into account that this is usually how things he sets his mind to goes; straight down the gutter, that is.

Somehow though, she’s sitting across from him, and wants to be there, and for some unfathomable reason that does not feel strange. It feels sort of like fitting perfectly actually, like he’s finally releasing a breath he’s been holding for a very long time, like he’s kicked off his jeans after a long day. It feels like washing your hands after getting something sticky on them or wrapping your fingers around a cup of hot tea after returning inside from a blizzard. He could go on with the misfit metaphors, but his point is- he never imagined it to be quite like this, and it astounds him how much better the actuality of their friendship is to whatever his mind may have conjured up when he was fourteen.

“My turn.” Lydia claims and he doesn’t protest although that’s a lie. She plays a little with her hair as she tries to think of something to ask him, brow bunching adorably and _wow_ , does he need to stop his brain. _Stop brain, please._ He pleads silently.

His eyes zero in on how her lips pout, and apparently _not_ then.

“Would you rather…” Lydia begins in a lightly teasing tone, but as the actual question drags out her eyes grow wide and gloss over slightly as she turns her head to look at him. When she speaks up again her voice is breathy and her hands are tightly intertwined where they lay upon her homework. “Would you rather be alone or settle?” She asks him and he is struck mute by the faint intent behind her words. He gets the strange sensation of being unmoored from the usual safety of their conversations, the premonition that she has decided to take them down an uncharted route with her simple question.

“I… Um.” He tries to gather his piece of mind that suddenly feels scattered. What is she asking him?

“What d’you mean?” He manages a beat later, voice feeling a bit raw as it climbs from somewhere behind his heart where her question seems to have nested.

Her eyes flicker between his, and she sucks her bottom lip into her mouth. She releases it and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear before she answers him.

“I mean…” She starts, and looks away from his face, eyes trailing the lines of his shadow as he leans forward.

“Would you rather stay safe with someone you might not truly love for the rest of your life, or would you choose to be alone?”

She says it quickly. As if it is a shameful secret she’s sharing with him, and as soon as she’s finished her eyes find his again.

He takes a moment, tongue darting out over his lower lip as he tries to come to terms with why her question seems halting to him, like it contains a huge plot-hole or is halfway blind.

She stares at him, blue sweater, hair-do and all, looking like something he’s dreamed up in one of his better moments. But what makes her so amazingly terrifying and tempting to him is what comes out of her mouth. How the cogwheels of her mind works inside her petit frame and a carefully manufactured skull.

It dawns on him in a perplexing manner. Not suddenly or out of the blue. But rather slowly, and with the odd notion that it’s not a realization he’s making when he answers her, but rather a choice. A would-you-rather with a high-stake risk.

He sluggishly comprehends that they’re not playing the innocent game he first thought. Instead they are playing Texas-Hold’em and they’re betting on something invaluable. Of course, in this scenario, she’s the dealer and he is a dumbass. He shows her his hand, goes all in without even realizing he’s doing so. His heart is beats so hard in his chest he thinks it must be shoving through the fabric of his t-shirt. He wants to reach for her, but settles on holding her gaze steady as he answers;

“Why can’t it be both?”

Her lips part slightly and he tries to not think of the stakes as he goes on. All in.

“Why can’t I be safe with someone I truly love?”

Like kicking off jeans, like a cup of tea warming his fingers. Or maybe he’s just naked and cold in the whipping rain.

Lydia doesn’t really answer him.

 

**Now.**

 

“So where to?”

Lydia snugs further back into her seat and hides her smile as she turns to watch her hand where it hangs out of the Jeep. She makes small waves in the air and has a fleeting thought about necessary things, like oxygen, nutrition and maybe him beside her, before she answers.

“Anywhere where I don’t have to look at Scott and Allison sucking face.”

“Right.” Stiles nods in compliance.

“So we’ll tell them to meet us somewhere public.” He concludes.

“Like that’ll stop them.” Lydia snorts and he sighs deeply in response.

“You’re right.”

“Of course I am.” Says Lydia, and shoots him a winning smile as he rolls his eyes.

Their best friends, apparently, are hooking up. They’re hooking up on anything, everywhere, all of the time. It’s exhausting and frankly – disgusting how sweet they are. Holding hands and “taking it slow”. Pfft, yeah _right._

To be the designated un-in-loved best friend on top of that, and have to stand besides Stiles with his hands and his hair and his nose and his stupidly delicious looking neck and try to drown out any murmured declarations of hotness by discussing literally anything that couldn’t be related to sex, is the worst. Because apparently everything can be related to sex.

It’s not like she means to stare at him, but somewhere it has dawned on her. Between blasting All Time Low songs in his Jeep where she has started to spend an immense abundance of time, and staying for dinner at his house, where they had started to move their “Study-sessions” that usually involved a very minuscule amount of time actually studying.

And it's not like she means to look. But it just sort of happens, like in econ the other day.

 

It had been hot out that day, and she thinks his flannel might’ve been just a smidge more open than it usually was. The arms of it pushed just an inkling higher up over his forearms. And throat dry her eyes had followed the lines of his decidedly slick neck as he had dragged his long, knobby fingers over it.

 

She thinks about this, sitting beside him in the car with gaze steadily trained on her hand hanging out of the window and it sloshes in her stomach, not entirely unpleasantly.

 

The realization that somewhere past buzzcut and playing Lacrosse, Stiles Stilinski of all people, had gotten  _sexy._ She's pretty sure it equals her and screwed in some sort of weird combination. And not screwed in the way she all of a sudden finds she wants to be. 

 

And  _oh my god she did not just think that_.

 

“So tell them to meet us at Denny’s?” Stiles speaks up, and as her eyes stray over to him on reflex she finds that they’re nearly there, and that Beacon Hills has passed her by during the lengthy reflection over the boy beside her she’s just had.

 

“Yeah.” She swallows, suddenly feeling nervous for some reason. “Yeah, I’ll just…” She trails off, fumbling a bit as she digs out her phone from her purse and composes a short text to Allison.

 

He seems completely unbothered and oblivious beside her, humming along to the radio and drumming the beat of the song playing on the wheel with his fingers. And it’s something else too she recognizes. It’s not how she finds him attractive but also how she comes to school looking for him nowadays. How she longs for his voice and can’t quite put her phone down when she should go to sleep because he’s texting her another random animal fact or what he thinks has the prospect of becoming _the_ next meme.

 

A few first drops of rain splatter against the windshield of the Jeep and she makes the comparison with him unthinkingly. He feels like warm summer-rain. Like choosing to stay outside and get wet. Her mind backtracks, sees a whole batch of different Stiles’ sitting beside her. At seven, nine, thirteen, fifteen and she chooses him now. This time she wants to make the right choice.

 

“Don’t go to Denny’s.”

 

The words have exited her mouth without her really allowing them to, but she goes along as soon as he turns to her with a furrowed brow.

 

“What?”

He shoots her a confused look, but she can’t really concentrate as the slow warmth of her realization spreads through her body, like a buzz of a lamppost, and it fills her with something light.

  
“Pull over.” She orders, and looking for somewhere to pull up, shifting gears, brow still frowning he does as she asks without questioning. Her fingertips tingle.

 

The car halts abruptly on the small graveled road he’s steered the car in to, and he turns the keys in the ignition, the sounds of the car’s engine dying as he turns to her.

 

“What’s going on Lydia?”

 

It begins to rain in earnest as she shifts in her seat, examining his face. It rattles down on the car and the sound of it fills the open spaces of the Jeep. He swallows as she looks at him, eyes flitting over her face as she tries to find grasp over the situation.

She usually likes to keep things to herself. It’s what she does. She lets them mound and shape her and fester, and is mostly a bystander to this process. Her job in that equation is to cover up whatever cavities and hollow spaces they leave behind in the making. But this, it presses on her suddenly, as if it could slip out any second.

She feels as if the air quivers between them, the way it does over a crackling fire. His hood is halfway up over his head and there is a squeaking sound as his fingers slips a little on the wheel.

 

“Lydia?” He inquires.

 

Not so surprisingly, she panics. She feels her breathing getting labored as she scrambles for the handle of the door and forces it open, unbuckling herself and almost falling out in the process.

 

She hears a faint; “What the fuck,” behind her, before she slams her door shut and his opens. The rain is soaking, and she pushes a hand through already limping curls as her chest heaves. He comes around the car, slightly hunched over and pulling on the hood of his shirt, and she feels dizzy with the prospect of him there, tries to count the moles on his face to regain sanity, which helps nothing at all.

 

“What the hell is going on Lydia? Are you okay?” He starts the sentence sharply and ends it on a soft concerned note as he takes her in. It smells of pines and grass and as he steps closer a bit of the laundry detergent him and his dad uses.

 

“Lyds?” His voice is quiet as his hands comes up to her arm tentatively. She’s out in the rain. She chose to be.

 

She moves another step forward, taking his face in-between her hands, and pulls him down to press their lips together.

His mouth is plush and wet, and it shoots through her very core to taste him. Her fingers shift through the hair by his temples and her eyes fall shut. She’s temporarily shielded from the weather and the slow drag of his lips against hers reminds her of yet again of fire. He inhales sharply through his nose and the sound of rain hitting the jeep and the ground around them feels amplified, ignited and turned up like every other sensation going through her mind. A year could’ve passed as their mouths slide over each other. An entire childhood cramped in between the nonexistent space between them.

 

She draws back slightly, the rain no longer heightened in sound but rather dull compared to the intensity in his eyes as he stares down at her, arms lips by his sides as her hands still grasp his face. He licks his lips, brow bunching and her hands slips a little, down his cheek, thumb coming to rest at the corner of his mouth.

 

“Why’d you do that?” He asks, expression unreadable and she swallows again, eyes zeroing in on the dent she’s creating in his cheek. There is something addictive hiding beneath his skin. Stardust settled in his blood, rushing through his veins and she wants to feel it flush beneath her fingers.

He’s a drug and she thinks she’s maybe becoming a junkie. He’s dorky and he’s gorgeous and she wants him for herself. He’s a well-kept secret and she isn’t telling anyone.

 

Resolutely her eyes find his again.

 

“Because I want you to know.” She tells him. And maybe that’s too cryptic. Too much of a cliché and does not entirely put the sentiment across. But it’s all she can give him right now. Her heart stammers too much whenever his eyes finds her in the hallways of school and she has to regain focus, find her balance. But this, she can give him this.

 

His hands finds her face slowly and he cradles her jaw carefully, like she’s made of glass and could break any second. But it doesn’t make her feel small when his thumbs stroke over her cheeks and he hovers close, stepping right into her space again so that her back makes contact with the side of the Jeep. She grows big, wrapping around the both of them, protecting them from the outside world.

 

“You’ll fucking wreck me Lydia. You do know that, right?” He murmurs against her and her eyes flutter closed as he noses along her chin. Her hands grip the front of his t-shirt, clinging to it as he presses up against her, invades her every sense.

 

“And I’ll let you.” He tells her lowly.

 

This time when their lips meet it’s fervent. It’s all push and pull and standing ground. Her nails rake down his stomach and his fingers tangle in her hair as he licks hotly into her mouth. The slide of his tongue against her makes her feel weak and she wraps her arms around his neck as he it traces the roof of her mouth. His hands slip down her body, and as they take ahold of her hips she gets the semblance of him pulling at her tightly sewn seems. It rips through her and as she sucks his bottom lip into her mouth and his thumbs starts pressing urgent patterns into her skin she wants him to pull harder, rip her open and let her pour out into him.

One of her hands slip beneath his t-shirt and he makes a sound close to a whine that makes her press her thighs together as the sound of it blooms down her core.

  
“Shit.” He pants wetly into her mouth and her swollen lips brush against his as he speaks. She opens her eyes to assess him and it coils hotly in her stomach at the sight of him, with dilated pupils and hands petting over her hips as his fingers slip beneath her tank top.

 

But they’re getting drenched and she wants to see more, and so she searches blindly behind her for the door handle to the car, and smiles triumphantly as she gets ahold of it, ripping it open. Stiles stares at her as if in a daze when she hauls herself up into the backseat and she settles on the opposite end of the car, legs spreading for him to climb in after her. There’s something hungry about the way he licks his lips as he climbs her body, from her caps up to her face, hood falling off his head and door falling shut behind him as he places sporadic kisses along the landscapes that pools and curves to make out her different parts. When he reaches her face he stops, elbow resting beside her head and her hand coming up to cup through the hair on the back of his head, tightening as he lets his body down upon hers carefully, and she feels him press against her.

 

“So should we tell them we’ll be late?” He breathes as his lips ghosts hers once again.

 

She cranes her neck upward and his nose nudges against hers as she shifts a little so that her other hand can cradle his jaw.

 

“Nah.” She gives her head the tiniest shake.

 

“See, I’m thinking we won’t show up at all.”

 

He chuckles as she kisses him again, and it rumbles through him in a way that makes her grind upwards. Then, as he groans loudly and bites down on her bottom lip, they stop laughing all together. Instead they keep occupied in other means, and it’s just as entertaining, it’s just not a laughing matter.

 

When he drops her off at her house, just as it’s starting to darken she has nine missed calls and a very presumptions text that holds only one word.

 

From: Allison. Sent today at 18.52 p.m.

_Finally._

 

 

**Then.**

 

 

"Can I ask you something?"

Scott is lying in his beanbag chair when he asks, staring at the ceiling while Stiles makes another kill on Call of Duty. It's the last day of summer-break and tomrrow they're starting high-school, which is like a _big_ deal, but also not at all because they're doing it together.

 

Stiles makes a noise of confirmation, not really able to focus since he's currently being harassed by like, nine other guys online, _thank you_ , but there's something about the way Scott says it that makes him attentive.

 

"How do you know if you like someone?" Scott asks, and it's with the kind of voice that makes Stiles' pause the game and turn over in his own chair to look at him. Scott is already staring and Stiles feels something sad climb his throat, because he used to talk about Lydia with Scott all the time, but now he hasn't in a while because it doesn't feel right.

 

But Scott is jarringly serious, and so Stiles can't make himself try to joke it away.

 

"How do you mean?" He questions back, not really wanting to divulge.

 

Scott sighs and shifts in his chair, hands coming to rest on his thighs as he thinks.

 

"I mean like... how does it feel?"

 

It hurts. That's Stiles' first thought. It hurts and it doesn't ever seem to bend and it wrecks in his head. It feels like running without getting anywhere, legs pumping beneath you until you're out of air, out of road and really fucking sad when you're lying in your bed at night wondering why you can't be enough. It feels like longing for tomorrow when today never ends and it feels like wanting to take a breath when you're lying on the bottom of the lake. It hurts.

 

But not always.

 

Sometimes it flies instead. High and soaring and burns you in a good way. Sometimes it's growing and stretching and enfolding him until it's soft everywhere, warm like beneath your covers late in the morning when you don't have to get up. Sometimes when Lydia pays attention and he catches her in a off moment, he thinks he could swim and never get tired or just be, still and floating.

 

He swallows, eyes drifting towards the window and then back to Scott. It's hard to explain, but also the easiest thing in the world. He swipes at his brow, plucking a little with the controller to the Xbox before he speaks up, not really able to meet Scott's imploring gaze.

 

"You'll know." He says finally, looking down at his hands. "When you feel that way, you won't have to ask."

 

"What if I won't recognize it?" Scott asks, voice quiet and Stiles blinks as he tries to find the words.

 

"It's not like... It's not something you realize Scott. It's more like something you discover, as if it's been there the whole time. You won't have to ask because if you do then it's already to late and you'll know."

 

Scott is silent for a long time, and Stiles is for once too. The afternoon summer-sun filters in through Scott's blinds and they've just finished an entire bowl of popcorn. He knows Lydia isn't what he wants her to be right now, and he certainly never has been what she wants. It sucks, but this thing doesn't, this feeling inside of him and right now being here with Scott. He thinks that life is varied and he's more than anyone makes him out to be, even himself, they can't be boxed in; only spread further.

 

Finally, Scott wiggles in his chair, poking at Stiles' with a socked foot and offers a small smile.

 

"I like you." He says, raising his eyebrows and eyes glimmering, and Stiles rolls his eyes because he knows what Scott means.

 

"Not like that you don't, you dork." He says, poking back and Scott starts to giggle.

 

"How'd you know?" Scott says, laughing as they start kicking at each other. "You'll see when we're married and have three kids."

 

Stiles snorts loudly as he flings the controller away, tugging himself forward until he can take Scott in a neck-hold and scrubs his head.

 

"Idiot, do I have to explain what it feels like to have a brother as well?"

 

 

**Now.**

 

 

 

"Could you please relax?"

 

"The beach really isn't my natural habitat Lyds."

 

She flips paper in her magazine, pops the bubble on her gum, changes position, left then right, before feigning to answer him. 

 

"As opposed to?" 

 

He shifts on the blanket they've laid on the sand for the hundredth and fiftieth time, adjusting his sunglasses and makes a high pitched noise of dissatisfaction.

 

"As opposed to a dark room with Kleenex and pornhub," he quips sarcastically and she almost smiles before picturing the actual scenario; Stiles in his room, lips parted and hand wrapped around-

 

"The fuck do I know. Not _here."_ He whines, cutting her crash-course line of thought short. 

 

"You're not even undressed Stiles." She exclaims finally, attaching a sigh at the end. He's not. She's in a sundress and he's in rolled up jeans and a t-shirt. 

 

"True." He agrees easily. "Then I'd be having much more fun." He grins at her brightly above the edge of his clubmasters and she feels her chest flushing but pretends to be unaffected as she lifts her chin higher.

 

She scoffs as she closes her magazine and then plucks her sunglasses of her face to put them both in her bag. 

 

"It was you that suggested we do something." Lydia points out as she sits up on her knees. Small grains of sand dig into her knees and it feels strangely good. It's something else to focus on than Stiles' fingers that have begun to creep towards her on the blanket. 

 

She wants nothing more than to make this easier for him. Wiggle closer and put his hands on her body and press him close, close, close to her heart that flutters traitorously up her throat. But she's playing hard to get, because she has learned that he _thrives_ in working for it. 

 

"I know, I know," he mumbles offhandedly as his fingers sneak up her leg, wrapping around her thigh where she's sitting in front of him. 

 

"But now I'm saying that we should get home to the sofa, put on Netflix and not watch it until Dad comes home." He says, his other hand pushing her hair over her shoulder as it comes around her neck softly. He's careful with her, always. As if she's impossibly delicate, when really- he knows she's nothing close to dainty and helpless. 

But she revels in it, that he does this not because he has to, but because he wants to. She preens in getting to feel precious and strong and capable all the same. 

 

It ignites in her as he leans forward, nosing along her clavicle. 

 

"Who says you get to decide?" She asks, tilting her neck to allow him better access as his lips brushes against her skin, but not doing anything to repay his actions. 

 

"Mm," he hums as his warm breath washes over her chest and she closes her eyes briefly, wondering silently who taught him this kind of slow torture. She ignores the faint pang in her stomach as a sudden image of Stiles at thirteen staring at her from across the classroom enters her mind. 

 

She feels as if she's going crazy sometimes, with how much she wants him. It's nothing she's experienced before and it's always, constant and eager as it sets in her in a million small different ways. Like small grains of sand imbedding in every centimeter of her being. 

 

"No one, so if you wanna stay here, out in public, we could do that too," he gives in easily and smirks against her collarbone. Easy because he knows she's already caving and leaning back to make her be the one that makes the final call. 

 

"Fine." She sneers as she gets up, annoyed, turned on and a little bit lightheaded. 

 

She rips the blanket out from underneath him as he begins to laugh, and snatches her bag up from the ground before reaching her hand out to pull him up.

 

"Come on." She orders sharply and impatiently. 

 

He takes her hand, still chuckling as he gets up. 

 

"Yes dear."

 

He plants a smacking wet kiss on her cheek as they go.

 

"Anything for you." 

 

The sentence stabs harshly somewhere around where her heart sits in her chest. 

 

Three words and Stiles’ eyes from across the classroom. Only a few in a million grains of sand.

 

 

 

**Now.**

 

 

They’re not exactly public with it. Not that he’s sure what “it” actually is. They haven’t really talked about that. They just make out a lot. Did the sex-thing once or twice. Not a big deal. Not at all. Not even a tiny deal. It does not drive him crazy wondering. He hardly pays it any thought. Lydia Martin wants to sex him often and repeatedly. Not a big deal.

 

He sees her as he walks out of the cafeteria, and because his chill has been buried and like, turned fossil, he waves widely, almost knocking a freshman in the head in the process. He apologizes profusely and when he turns to look if she’s seen he finds her hiding a smirk behind a curtain of perfect, soft, strawberry-blonde awesomeness. Her hair is totally a thing. She caught him smelling it once and it was mortifying but totally worth it as she had let him brush his fingers through it later, spreading it over her bare back and untangling the knots created by earlier… _activities._

 

“Hi.” He says, a little out of breath as he comes up to her and she presses her lips together to tamper her smile.

 

“Hi there.”

 

“So what’s up?” He asks, and dear _lord_. Is that actually what he wants to ask her?

 

“Or down, that depends of course.” He adds, and wants to run and hide, because obviously he has completely lost control over the channel between his mouth and brain. He winces as she chuckles at him and they begin to walk down the corridor. Her hand brushes his every time she puts her right foot forward and it creates a landslide in his thorax every time.

 

“Not much.” She offers him in what must be a moment of pity, and he nods, ducking his head a little as they come to a top by her locker.

 

“All good in the hood.”

 

He blinks. Oh god.

Her brow arches somewhat as she opens her locker and she gives him a little pat as she looks at him with what is _surely_ pity. “Sure Stiles.”

 

He gulps, and is thankful as he feels himself getting distracted by the pattern on her blouse.

 

“That’s pretty.” He comments, (which is marginally better than the hood-comment,) pinching the fabric between his fingers, and carefully, after casting a glance around them, he pushes the pads of his fingers gingerly along the piano of her ribs. She inhales sharply, and peers up at him through thick eyelashes for a second. “Thanks.” She replies a beat later, and he’s almost certain he isn’t imagining the hitch in her voice.

 

He smooths his hand flat over her ribcage once reassuringly, just below her breast before pulling his hand away, instead splaying it out over the closed locker besides hers.

 

He’d made a plan once, long ago, age nine and IQ probably below average. It was called The Ten Year Plan To Get Lydia Martin To Fell In Love With Me. (He was still struggling a tiny bit with his grammar back then, ok?)

Anyhow, it had included, (amongst many other things,) three dozens of roses, sixteen white doves and renting out Beacon Hills cinema. Something he’d at the time had meticulously saved up for. To be honest it wasn’t a great plan. Not now, not then. And his savings had gone to other things eventually. Like fixing Scott’s skateboard, a seriously unhealthy amount of Popsicle and trying his hand at the one-armed bandit machine at the mall. It was a bad plan, and life had grown up and around it. As he’d gotten older he’d lost faith in it, resuming instead to watch the glowing brilliance of Lydia from afar.

 

And yet, here he was, age eighteen and allowed close, but still uncertain in the knowledge if he had her. Not that he thought she could be had or obtained. Lydia should be able to soar and prosper and grow without anyone dragging her down. But it itched in his throat as he watched her collect her things from her locker, filled his lungs until he there wasn’t even room for him to inhale properly. He felt suddenly, as if there was apparent lack of roses and doves. Or maybe not those exact things perhaps, but a clear shortage of putting in the effort of something tangible.

 

He wanted real. He wanted tangible. She had been ice-cold once upon a time, and he’d thought that roses and doves and rented out cinemas could maybe melt her.

 

It felt almost comical how wrong that perception had been.

 

He’d witnessed her melt now. Underneath his hands, her body moving and molding like running water as they wrapped around each other. But that was a different kind of thawing. Lydia had turned ice at the prospect of anyone getting too close; of anyone seeing through her laboriously put together character. And whereas he wore his heart on his sleeve she seemed to hide hers away, stash it beneath empty words and safety.

 

“Do you want to come over later?”

 

She offers him a small smile as she closes her locker and looks up to meet his eye.

 

“Sure.”

 

Her smile is small, but for an ice-queen, it feels unexpectedly warm.

 

 

**Then.**

 

"You won't do it." Stiles concludes as he stares Scott down.

"Will too." Scott replies, eyes stubbornly set on Mr. Holloways backyard. Or to be more specific; at their football in Mr. Holloways backyard, where it landed in the flowerbed right next to the porch steps after Scott had accidentally kicked it too hard when they we're playing in the street.

"You sad that five minutes ago." Stiles points out, and this time Scott replies by pushing at Stiles' shoulder and Stiles snorts.

He knows that maybe he shouldn't be teasing Scott about it, because truth is old man Holloway is pretty scary. He's always angry, and has on several different occasions waved his cane in Stiles general direction and promised him a fair variation of different painful scenarios if Stiles dare disturb him again. It's just, old man Holloway’s house is right next to his on their street, and it's practically impossible to avoid something ending up there eventually.

So maybe he shouldn't tease Scott about it, because honestly, he feels pretty nervous himself with the prospect of getting caught. But it's thrilling, and it makes him skitter around Scott a bit more, trying to ignore the itch beneath the band aid on his elbow from where he fell down skateboarding last week. This is a nice distraction.

"I dare you."

Scott turns to him with big eyes. They both know that refusing a dare means you're a wuss and no one wants to be that. "Stiles come on! You can't do that!" Scott exclaims, dragging the back of his hand over his nose.

"I just did!" He says back and Scott eyes flicker between his and the ball. A moment of anticipation passes as Scott seemingly calculates the risks, but then he sighs, brow furrowing as he shoulders past Stiles and after looking over his shoulder a few times, he bounds right into Mr. Holloways backyard and gathers the football.

He arrives back next to Stiles only a few seconds later, grinning and out of breath as he thrusts the ball at him. "Told you." He sniggers, and then Stiles begins to laugh too.

 

It's different the next day in school when Scott dares him back.

It's different and Stiles doesn't quite know how to explain that to Scott with the right words without making it seem like too big of a deal. It's different, because this is Lydia Martin, not old man Holloway, and this isn't a football in the backyard, it's Stiles her if she's coming to the dance two weeks from now.

There's a sudden dread in his belly as he nears her and the cluster of girls that always seem to encircle her. He knows he has a hard time shutting up about her, knows that Scott groans and rolls his eyes because he just doesn't know what it feels like to _know_ , the way Stiles does with Lydia. But Scott daring him like this makes something bad pool inside of him, because things is; he's not entirely certain Lydia knows either yet.

But _he_ does, he thinks as he nears the girls’ tentatively, wiping his palms off on his pants and swallowing as he glances back over his shoulder at Scott whom makes a thumbs up at him. He _knows_.

He knows he and Lydia would have a great time if she ever feigned hang out with him and Scott. Because Lydia is smart and has awesome hair and reads the most in class, (even though she pretends she doesn't when somebody asks) so obviously she'd have a lot of interesting things to say. Maybe she even watches Star Trek? Anyhow, It doesn't make much of a difference to him, because he _knows_. Because somewhere between competing with Lydia for trivia and growing two inches in only a year, he has come to the conclusion that she's pretty cool. Like, great even.

So when he clears his throat as he comes up beside them, maybe that's why he feels the bad kind of nervous, because at the moment, he may be the only one in the entire world that knows. He forgets all about it however, when Amanda Simmons and Kaiya Albert part for him, revealing Lydia leaned back against the wall of the school and chewing gum. Her hand fingers a bit with the ends of her ponytail and her eyes are close to bored as he comes into her sight. She pops the bubble she's been blowing, assessing him as he tries to find something to do with his hands.

"How can we help you?" Lydia drawls and someone giggles to his left.

"Um... Hi Lydia." He starts, because his head feels like it’s going a thousand miles a minute all of a sudden. She says nothing, choosing instead to stare at him until he continues on his own. He thinks of how her hair looks when the sun hits it right, thinks about how his mom told him to do things before it’s too late the other day when they visited at the hospital, thinks about not being a wuss and he takes charge, ignoring everyone else in favor of her.

"Yeah, well- uh. I was just thinking, because the Halloween dance is coming up soon and all- I'm going as Luke Skywalker, it’s great and- no yeah. Anyways. You've probably seen the posters, they're all over school and I-, I was just..." He licks his lips, eyes flickering over her face, the sound of gravel crunching beneath his feet reaching his ear as he twist as little.

"Are you coming? To the dance I mean?" He manages finally, and finds himself looking straight at her.

There's this moment. Just for a second, when he thinks he sees something like pity in her eyes, and it curls uncomfortably inside of him.

But then the girls around them breaks out into giggles and whispers, and the world comes flooding back to him, breaking the suspended moment that had only held the two of them. His cheeks flush with burning red suddenly, and her eyes harden. She pushes of the wall, eyes trailing him up and down.

"What does it matter to you?" She asks coldly, and he feels something stammer in his chest as she circles him once.

"I just-" He starts, but his words die in his throat and Lydia’s lips pull into a sugary sweet smile.

"I'm going." She interrupts him, and his heart starts pumping faster, his body feels too warm for his clothes, because she isn't finished speaking yet, he can tell.

"I'm going with Jackson." She tells him, and suddenly his heart stops beating all together, falling down to his feet. Of course she's going with Jackson. He's not even surprised at this piece of information. Not really.

"I-" he begins again, fingering on the zipper of his hoodie. Lydia stares at him, seemingly bigger than she actually is when all of the other girls sidle up behind her.

"I..." She mimics him in a teasing voice and crosses her arms over her chest. "'I' what Stiles?" She prods and his eyes cast downwards.

He looks down at his hands, thinks about when she stood a few meters away from him the other day after school and they were both waiting to be picked up. Thinks about how when he had told her "Hi." She had replied, shortly but with a nod of recognition. "Hi." before her mom had pulled up, and Stiles could make out her yelling to someone over the phone as Lydia climbed into the car. He looks back up, and although he has grown a whole of two inches in only a year he feels small.

"I was just wondering." He tells her quietly, before turning on his heels and stalking back to Scott, whom looks mighty guilty where he's waiting for Stiles at the steps into the school.

 

A few days later, when he's waiting for his dad to come pick him up, the sound of flats on asphalt next to him makes him turn his head up.

Lydia clutches her books to her chest and he can see goosebumps on her knees below her skirt as the wind shifts through the fabric.

Staring straight ahead, determined set to her brow and with a steady voice, she tells him-

"Hi."

 

**Now.**

 

 

After her third knock on the Stilinski’s front door, she finally lets herself in. Hand clutching at the tote hanging over her shoulder with a (props) chemistry book and her toilet-bag. Stiles had asked if she wanted to come over after all.

 

There's an instant of realization as her hand presses down the handle on the door. The one that she's safe. It's jarring and it makes her hand tremble somewhat where it's wrapped around the cold iron of the hold. She can step inside, and it's always open. She doesn't need a key, like the one Jackson had one pressed into her palm and that left deep markings in her skin if her fingers hugged it hard enough.

 

“ _Shitshitshit_!” comes from inside the living room as she steps over the threshold, followed by a loud noise of something falling to the floor and breaking. And then that is also followed by something that sounds supiciously like a body hitting the hardwood.

 

"Don't come in." She hears Stiles say weakly from the other room, like he knows it's a lost cause. Like he knows she's already making her way towards him through the short hallway.

 

Always towards him nowadays.

 

As she comes around the corner she feels her resolution stammer as she takes him in. He's obviously fallen, sprawled over the living room floor, long, lean, goofy, smart, dorky and pretty. She likes him so much that her heart hammers and swells in her chest as he turns over on his back, still not looking at her, surrounded by unlit candles and with spilled snacks by his feet. He loves Star wars too intensely, has great hands (especially when he uses them for great purposes), his sleep-schedule is a nightmare (ha) and he is a walking encyclopedia of random facts.

 

He's tried to do something nice for her, and for some reason that almost brings tears to her eyes. It builds and builds and builds in her throat as she watches him speechlessly and she finds that the only thing she want is sort of the crawl down on the floor beside him and give him whatever it is that's twirling in her stomach. It also makes her sort of scared. Run-and-hide-palms-sweating scared.

 

There was a time when she didn't see him. When she didn't want to see him. As her eyes flicker over the livingroom table stacked with snacks and the abaundace of pillows and blankets piled on the sofa it feels sort of she's been turning her back to the sky for years, to stare at the ground instead. She sees him now though, and instead of anchoring her to the ground, heavy like gravity pulling her down, he lifts her higher. She's Lydia Martin and she can do anything. Like maybe hold Stiles Stilinski's hand in the hallway and win the Field's Medal.

 

She swallows, two times, forcing down the heavy, melancholy that the current moment is giving her in favor of him instead. Her hand slips on her tote and her toothbrush rattles against the chemistry book as she blinks down at him.

 

“Did you hurt yourself?”

 

He sighs, hoodie bunched up at his throat and brown eyes staring at the ceiling.

 

"Hi Lydia." He says, hands flexing a little against the floor.

 

She almost rolls her eyes, lettting the bag slip down her shoulder before she discards it by the doorframe, taking a step closer.

 

"I said; Did you hurt yourself?"

 

His foot twitches once and he scrubs the heel of his hand over his jaw before he answers.

 

“Uhm. Will my masculinity vanish if I admit that my elbow is, in fact, throbbing with pain?”

 

“What masculinity?”

 

He rolls his eyes, still slightly flushed from the embarrassment of his fall, and it tints his cheeks an adorably pink color. He coughs into his fist, eyes not really meeting hers, instead focusing on something above her shoulder.

 

“I just… wanted to make you something nice I guess.”

 

She has to remind herself as she keeps her eyes on his face, sky, not the floor. She can do anything, including insting on meeting his eyes when she feels like her own most be giving everything away.

 

“But obviously-“ He continues, gesturing around himself. “I fucked up.”

 

She doesn’t really know what to do with the sensation blooming up her throat, and so she decides to take mercy on him instead.

 

"I don’t know," She says, unfolding her arms from over her chest. “I kind of like it like this.”

 

His eyes stray over the room before coming back to hers. “ I really outdid myself here, I’d say.” He agrees, words heavy with sacrasm, but with soft eyes.

 

“I honestly think you did.”

 

He harrumphs, and then she can’t really not be honest with him anymore.

 

“No one has ever done something like this for me before.” She admits quietly and his eyes tints with something akin to sadness. She feels like she's taking aim as she speaks up again before he can, not entirely sure she can take his sincerity right now. “So I guess I think that this is sort of great as it is.”

 

Of course he picks up on what she’s feeling as he speaks up next, languid grin stretching over his face. Of course. Because somehow he knows her. Somehow he's always known her.

 

"You think that it’s great that I made an ass of myself?"

 

She smiles, finally.

 

"Well... yes?"

 

He seems to think this over for a second, brow knitting as he turns towards her.

 

"Oh. Alright. So... Oops I fell?"

 

He smiles up at her sheepishly from where he is lying, blinking a little when she snorts. 

 

"Sure you did." She comments dryly while he pushes up on his elbows, still grinning. 

 

The new, more mischievous glint in his eye and the feeling that is spreading inside of her that reminds of the one she gets Christmas morning makes it really hard not to smile back. She folds her arms in resistance, but she's pretty sure he can see straight through her act.  _He knows her_.

 

"Lydia," he begins, raising his brow suggestively. "Would you please come kiss it better?" 

 

He reaches out his palm for her to take, and she pretends to ponder it only for a moment before laying her hand in his, letting him pull her down on the thick carpet with him so that she's draped over his lap. 

 

"Argh," he continues dramatically as the corners of her mouth quirk upwards and her hands come to rest on his shoulders. 

 

He raises a hand to clutch above his heart as he closes his eyes, pretending to be in agonizing pain. 

 

“Oh my, how it hurts! Only a kiss from the princess will heal the prince now," he blurts out and she sighs.

 

"You're hardly the prince Stiles," 

 

" _Fine_ , servants boy, _whatever_ , don't fluke my flow Lydia."

 

"And I refuse to be the princess."

 

"Oh my... _fine_. Then what are you?"

 

"I'm the knight in shining armor."

 

"That's... alright. So; only a kiss from the knight in shining amour will heal the servants boy now!"

 

"Oh shut up."

 

"Please Lydia, _do_ shut me up."

 

She does. 

 

She rolls her eyes one last time, and then she wipes the shit-eating grin off his face by pushing her lips against his.

 

She's on her knees on the floor, but in the only sense that doesn't matter at the moment.

 

 

 

**Then.**

 

 

"Look dad! I'm doin' it!"

 

"That's great Stiles."

 

"You're not looking! I'm making it fly!"

 

"You're doing good son."

 

Truth is, he's not really doing great. The kite he's been trying to fly for the last half hour flops dangerously in the light summer-breeze as he tries to make it lift, but for the first time it's actually off-ground, and also- his mom is getting them ice cream like, _right now_ , so that's two good things in a short amount of time.

 

But like all good things, it comes to an end way too soon.

 

"Watch where you're going."

 

The kite wavers as he is startled, dips once, then twice, before crashing down towards the ground. Stiles makes an exapersted sound as he turns, huffing and crossing his arms as Lydia Martin comes into his field of vision.

She's in his class and she never asks him anything, only tells him things. Like when she tells him to be still, or not step on her feet (that was _one_ time.), or like when she told him that he needed a haircut. It's unfair because he wants to ask her a lot of things, since she seems to know pretty much everything.

 

And right now she's apparently also at the park-fair with her parents, telling him things, and making him crash his kite.

 

"You ruined it!" He exclaims sourly and she frowns. Lydia is wearing a yellow dress and an unimpressed look which makes him want to stomp his feet at her.

 

"You were about to run into me, that's not my fault." She points out, brushing something off the shoulder of her dress. He sort of wants to be grumpy about it, although his dad has told him you shouldn't be, but it was getting kind of boring flying the kite, and it's getting harder to focus when he spots his mom at the ice-cream cart in the back.

 

And honsetly, Lydia seems pretty cool, and since Scott is in Chicago to visit his family maybe Lydia will want to come build on their three-house if he's nice enough, and perhaps even explore that hole they found in the woods.

 

"Where are your parents?" He settles on finally, because he hasn't seem them around.

 

Lydia lifts her nose high up in the air, pig-tails swishing as she turns to point. "They're over there, by the benches."

 

Stiles turns to look and it's true, they are, although Lydia's mom seems grumpy, which is also unfair. Because apparently adults can be but not him. Stiles thinks it must be because she's drinking coffee when she must be aware that there's an ice-cream cart just to her left. He'd be too.

 

He bends down, collecting the kite up into his arm in a way that'll probably make the line bunch and knot, but he'll worry about that later.

 

"Have you tried the dart-wheel?" He asks next, keen to come off as nice. Because he really wants to explore that hole and Lydia would totally know everything about it.

 

Lydia sniffs a little, shoulders coming down as she turns back to him. "No. I haven't really tried anything." She admits, eyes set on her toes where they're peeking out of her sandals.

"Stiles, come get your cone!"

 

It's his mommy coming towards them, strawberry and chocolate ice-cream in hand, and Stiles can't help but get excited.

 

"Hi there sweetie." His mom says to Lydia as she crunches down to give Stiles his cone. "Are you here with your parents too?" She asks smiling, and Stiles can tell Lydia is trying to pretend that she's more than six years old, which seems stupid, because they are.

 

"Hi Mrs. Stilinski. Yes, they're over there having a conversation." Lydia points again and his mom nods.

 

"I think I'll go over and say hi to Natalie. You two be nice." She tells them, ruffling through Stiles' hair before walking off towards where Lydia's mom is sat. Lydia turns back to him, and by the way she scracthes her nose he can tell she's not pretending anymore.

 

"If you haven't tried anything yet you could try my ice-crem?" He offers generously, before he's even had any himself. He's being nice.

 

Lydia's eyes slit, she examines the cone in his hand and then his face.

 

"What do you want for it?" She questions, suddenly tense, and Stiles feels a little dumbfounded, because sure he wants her to come over and play, but she can have some even if she doesn't. The strawberry flavour drips on his right hand beneath the sun and he's struggling with holding the kite in his other one.

 

"I just thought maybe you wanted some?" He explains, and Lydia's eyes grow wider, her shoulders going down again.

 

"Oh." She says and they stare at each other for a few moments.

 

He thinks she's just about to say yes, and he realizes that she asked him something as well, so that's progress. But before that can happen, or he can tell her about this, Lydia's parents come by, and his mom as well.

 

"Lydia honey, we're going home." Her mommy informs her, and Stiles is almost dissapointed when Lydia nods.

 

"Okay." She agrees easily.

  
"It was nice seeing you Claudia." Natalie says, but her smile seems tight and Stiles doesn't believe that she really thinks that anything feels nice.

 

"You too, I'll see you around." His mommy waves as they stress off and Stiles turns to her feeling confused.

 

"They had to go just like that?"

 

His mom crouches down again, and it's much better to talk to her when she's at his level.

 

"Did you behave towards Lydia?" She asks him, ignoring his question, and he gets the strange feeling that she doesn't want to answer it.

 

"I was!" He tells her, feeling a little proud over it. "I really were mom, I even offered her ice-cream." He tells her, and it feels kind of like bragging, but he thinks it's okay.

 

"That's kind of you sweetheart." His mom smiles, reaching out so that he can unload the kite into her hands. He does, and then is finally able to lick a stripe along his cone. It's a perfect combination of flavours and he really wants to take a bite, althoug he knows he shouldn't because then you can get brain-freeze, and he doesn't want that. Scott says that brain-freeze can be lethal, and his mom is a nurse so he would know.

 

"I'm gonna be nice to her tomorrow in school too." He promises as he takes his mom's hand and they start walking back towards where his dad is sitting on a blanket, unloading their picknick lunch. Fair is awesome, he gets ice-cream _before_ food.

 

"You should always be nice Stiles, to everyone." His mom says scoldingly.

 

Stiles silently disagrees as he goes about his cone. But Lydia. He'll be nice to her from now on. Lydia is pretty cool. And she knows things.

 

Maybe in the future, they can really be friends.

 

 

**Now.**

 

 

He comes to school one morning and Lydia is waiting for him by his locker. Her hair is in loose waves and her skirt is really pretty. He probably looks a mess, because he didn't fall asleep until four and then he snoozed until there was only a five minute window left to squeeze his morning-routine into.

 

But she smiles at something he's saying, although he's not sure what because his mouth's default setting is long, rambling sentances, and when he's shrugged his backpack off and put the lock back his locker she takes his hand, eyes a little big and mouth slightly parted.

 

"Can I ask you something?" She says, and his heart is suddenly hammering, going a thousand miles an hour beneath his t-shirt.

 

He nods, licks his lips and unconsciously tangles their fingers.

 

He thinks he knows what's coming. He's walking through her house on the street he built her inside of his head and it's empty. The windows and doors are wide open, blown out and he's stumbling forward through it.

 

"Would you like to be my boyfriend?"

 

His mind wipes blank. White, soft abyss.

 

"I mean-" She continues hurriedly, squeezing his hand painfully hard. "Like, for real. All strings attached, dates and like, I could kiss you right now?"

 

He wants to look down and count his fingers, make sure he's not dreaming or something but instead he lets go of her in favor of taking her face into his hands as he leans down to kiss her.

He kisses her and he thinks that if nothing's ever right then at least this is. Him and her. 

He thinks that it hurts all the time, all over his body, and especially when her eyes searches for him and haven't found him yet. It hurts and it soars and it's fucking amazing.

He thinks that there's something precious in spending so long on charting the route to a heart. Thinks that maybe the good part is finding the way. 

He thinks of love and it's like a messy bed. Heavenly to lie in, sometimes with soft breathes and bodies pressed into it and sometimes the pillow wet with tears. It's the place to dream and dreams can be both good and bad. He thinks of love as a messy bed and sees Lydia spread out in his blue sheets and it's the most gorgeous thing ever.

He leans back a little on his heels, blinking as he meets her eyes, feeling like he could climb a mountain, burn down the school, hell, take Lydia Martin on a date. Feels right.

 

"That's a yes." He whispers as her hands come up to cover his, she plants a quick kiss on his wrist that stains red with lipstick.

 

"Good." She says, but her voice is a little shaky and he gets the odd notion of wanting to cry.

 

"I expect great things about your promposal." She smiles, and the heavy note lifts somewhat.

He smiles back then, and sort of wants to tell her that he expects life to give him nothing else ever again, because nothing could top this and he'd still be thankful.

 

But he thinks it can wait. He's waited long enough, and besides-

 

They've got time.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> TELL ME WHAT YOU THOUGHT!!!!!!
> 
> Any feedback is appriciated. Love ya'll.


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